Seated at a long table was a solitary and lonely-looking figure,
supporting one thin old cheek on his hand as he rested his elbow on the
table and seemed to be gazing far away into space. She did not know that
he was rather deaf, and had not heard her enter, and she stood and
looked at him, with her heart aching in a funny sort of way, she
thought, for the sake of a wicked old man.
She stared and stared, and the more she stared, the bigger a lump in her
throat seemed to become. The room was so quiet and he sat so still, and
something in his face brought that of her mother to her mind.
At last she walked right up to him, and, feeling if she did not get out
the words quickly she never would, Hepsie stretched out her hand and
said: "When I stopped you in the lane to-day, I didn't know how much
mother still loved you, and I forgot all about honouring parents,
however unkind they seem, or I shouldn't have told you what I did,
however true it was, for I hurt mother shockingly, as any one could see,
and I've promised to look after my tongue much better, and so I just
rushed up here to say--what I have said--and--and--please that's all,
except----"
She gulped and choked, her small quivering and scarlet face with the
pitiful eyes gazing down into his--and the years rolled away in the old
man's sight, and his daughter was back at his side again. What was she
saying in that pleading voice, as she knelt and clasped his shaking
hand?
"Except--except--I'm sorry, I am! Oh--I didn't think how sad you were,
and can't you love me just a bit?"
And what were Hepsie's feelings then when the old man rose, and seizing
her in his arms, cried brokenly:
"Oh, child, if only your mother had said the same--only just once in the
midst of my anger--but she passed her father by, she passed him by! And
never a word in all these years of my loneliness and pain! My heart is
breaking, for all its pride!"
"She wrote again and again," declared Hepsie, and he started, and such a
frown came then, that she was quite frightened, though she repeated,
"Indeed she did, and she loves you still.
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