Time, the great consoler, helped these influences, and he gradually
fell into more easy and less dangerous habits of life. He ceased from
his more perilous rambles. He thought less of the danger from the
great overhanging rocks and forests; they had hung there for
centuries; it was not very likely they would crash or slide in his
time. He became accustomed to all Elsie's strange looks and ways. Old
Sophy dressed her with ruffles round her neck, and hunted up the red
coral branch with silver bells which the little toothless Dudleys had
bitten upon for a hundred years. By an infinite effort, her father
forced himself to become the companion of this child, for whom he had
such a mingled feeling, but whose presence was always a trial to him
and often a terror.
At a cost which no human being could estimate, he had done his duty,
and in some degree reaped his reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of
filial feeling for him, such as her nature was capable of. She never
would obey him; that was not to be looked for. Commands, threats,
punishments, were out of the question with her; the mere physical
effects of crossing her will betrayed themselves in such changes of
expression and color that it would have been senseless to attempt to
govern her in any such way. Leaving her mainly to herself, she could
be to some extent indirectly influenced,--not otherwise. She called
her father "Dudley," as if he had been her brother. She ordered
everybody and would be ordered by none.
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