Child, you know what I think all that.

It is for you, my only child, that I am doing what now I do." I looked up into his large, sad eyes without a word, in such a way that he lifted me up in his arms and kissed me, as if I were a little child instead of a maiden just fifteen.

This he had never done before, and it made me a little frightened.

He saw it, and spoke on the spur of the thought, though still with one arm round me.
"Perhaps you will live to be thankful, my dear, that you had a stern, cold father.

So will you meet the world all the better; and, little one, you have a rough world to meet." For a moment I was quite at a loss to account for my father's manner; but now, in looking back, it is so easy to see into things.