Right glad they were to see us again--not for the pleasure of carrying, but because a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance.
My father never came to meet us, at either side of the telling-house, neither at the crooked post, nor even at home-linhay although the dogs kept such a noise that he must have heard us.

Home-side of the linhay, and under the ashen hedge-row, where father taught me to catch blackbirds, all at once my heart went down, and all my breast was hollow.

There was not even the lanthorn light on the peg against the cow's house, and nobody said 'Hold your noise!' to the dogs, or shouted 'Here our Jack is!' I looked at the posts of the gate, in the dark, because they were tall, like father, and then at the door of the harness-room, where he used to smoke his pipe and sing.

Then I thought he had guests perhaps--people lost upon the moors--whom he could not leave unkindly, even for his son's sake.

And yet about that I was jealous, and ready to be vexed with him, when he should begin to make much of me.