At last he said:-- "Come now, Sissy, be a good lassie and say that ye're content to stay.
Ye've always been a good lassie and done what I told ye before." His accent was Scotch, but not the broad Scotch of an entirely uneducated man.

There was sobriety written in the traits of his face, and more--a certain quality of intellectual virtue of the higher stamp.
He was not young, but he was not yet old.
"I haven't," said the girl sullenly.
He sighed at her perverseness.

"That's not the way I remember it.

I'm sure, from the time ye were quite a wee one, ye have always tried to please me .-- We all come short sometimes; the thing is, what we are trying to do." He spoke as if her antagonism to what he had been saying, to what he was yet saying, had had a painful effect upon him which he was endeavouring to hide.
The girl looked over his head at the smoke that was proceeding from the log-house chimney.

She saw it curl and wreathe itself against the cold blue east.