But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_"
said Wynnie.
"It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to you
as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all possible
for you to do such a thing."
"It's too dreadful to talk about, papa," said Wynnie; and the subject was
dropped.
She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If the
perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked into her
own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that she was the
doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if she had been
deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of the house. This came
of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general dissatisfaction with
herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine sympathy,
or sufficient confidence of final purification. She never spared herself;
and if she was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no one was
yet more indulgent to them.
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