Part 24 (1/2)
”No; I haven't been in a pa.s.sion, papa, and I hope if I had, I wouldn't have been deceitful enough to try to hide it from you. But oh I've been very, very naughty two or three times in other ways, you know; and you were so good to forgive me and keep on loving me in spite of it all.”
”Dear child!” was all he said in reply, accompanying the words with a tender caress.
”I, too, have come a good deal short of my resolves,” observed Max, with a regretful sigh. ”Yet I suppose we have both done better than we should if we hadn't made good resolutions.”
”No doubt of it,” said his father. ”I feel it to be so in my case, though I, too, have fallen far short of the standard I set myself. But shall we not try again, my children?”
”Oh yes, sir, yes!”
”And try, not only to make the new year better--if we are spared to see it--but also the three remaining days of the old?”
”Yes,” sighed Lulu, ”perhaps I may get into a dreadful pa.s.sion yet before the year is out.”
”I hope not, daughter,” her father said; ”but watch and pray, for only so can you be safe. There is One who is able to keep you from falling.
Cling close to Him like the limpet to the rock.”
”Oh I will!” she replied in an earnest tone. ”But papa what is a limpet?
I don't remember ever having heard of it before.”
”It is a sh.e.l.l-fish of which there are numerous species exhibiting great variety of form and color. The common limpet is most abundant on the rocky coasts of Britain. They live on the rocks between low and high tide marks.
”They move about when the water covers them, but when the tide is out, remain firmly fixed to one spot; so firmly that unless surprised by a sudden seizure, it is almost impossible to drag or tear them from the rock without breaking the sh.e.l.l.”
”How can they hold so tight?” asked Max.
”The animal has a round or oval muscular foot by which it clings, and its ability to do so is increased by a viscous or sticky secretion.”
”Please tell some more about them, papa,” requested Lulu, looking greatly interested. ”Have they mouths? and do you know what they eat?”
”Yes, they have mouths and they live on seaweed, eating it by means of a long ribbon-like tongue covered with rows of hard teeth; the common limpet--which, as I have told you, lives on the British coast--has no fewer than one hundred and sixty rows, twelve teeth in a row. How many does that make, Max?”
”Nineteen hundred and twenty,” answered the lad after a moment's thought.
”Right,” said his father. ”The tongue when not in use, lies folded deep in the interior of the limpet.”
”Are their sh.e.l.ls pretty, papa?” Lulu asked.
”Those of some of the limpets of warmer climates are very beautiful,” he answered; ”large too. I have seen them on the western coast of South America, a foot wide; so large that they are often used as basins.”
”Oh I'd like to have one!” she exclaimed. ”Is it for their sh.e.l.ls people try to pull them off the rocks?”
”It may be so in some instances, but the limpet is used for food and also as bait, by the fisherman.
”Try, my children, to remember what I have been telling you about it; but most of all let your thoughts dwell upon the lesson to be drawn from its close clinging to the rock.
”G.o.d is often spoken of in the Scriptures as his people's rock, because he is their strength, their refuge, their asylum, as the rocks were in those places whither the children of Israel retired in case of an unexpected attack from their foes.
”David says; 'The Lord is my rock and my fortress.... Who is a rock save our G.o.d?'