Oh, father, perhaps I have deserved it." "You know best what you deserve.

But no bad word shall you have of me.
Only you must be careful for the future never to call me 'father.'" The farmer forgot all his visitors, and walked, without looking at anybody, toward the porch.

Then that hospitable spot re-awakened his good manners, and he turned and smiled as if he saw them all sitting down to something juicy.
"My good friends, make yourselves at home," he said; "the mistress will see to you while I look round.

I shall be back directly, and we will have an early supper." But when he got outside, and was alone with earth and sky, big tears arose into his brave blue eyes, and he looked at his ricks, and his workmen in the distance, and even at the favorite old horse that whinnied and came to have his white nose rubbed, as if none of them belonged to him ever any more.

"A' would sooner have heard of broken bank," he muttered to himself and to the ancient horse, "fifty times sooner, and begin the world anew, only to have Mary for a little child again." As the sound of his footsteps died away, the girl hurried out of the room, as if she were going to run after him; but suddenly stopped in the porch, as she saw that he scarcely even cared to feel the cheek of Lightfoot, who made a point of rubbing up his master's whiskers with it, "Better wait, and let him come round," thought Mary; "I never did see him so put out." Then she ran up the stairs to the window on the landing, and watched her dear father grow dimmer and dimmer up the distance of the hill, with a bright young tear for every sad old step..