She saw a lonely and deserted old man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again and again, while Mr.John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.
"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you.

She's come back to stay as long as he lives." The old man remained cold and stern.

His deep voice had a raucous note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.
"But how do you come back t' me ?" The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.
"I come back a wife of a _man_, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.
"Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my sight.

I raised ye, took keer o' ye when ye was little, sent ye t' school, bought ye dresses,--done every thin' for ye I could, 'lowin' t' have ye stand by me when I got old,--but no, ye must go back on yer ol' pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy knows anything about--a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the world"---- "What did you do for mother that she left _her_ father and mother and went with you?
How much did you have when you took her away from her good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians?
I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair in the house.

Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git--when Lime comes and asks for me ?" The old man was staggered.