Then father laughed and said he ought to charge for the meals that had been eaten; but he gave the Boer the money all the same; and Aunt Jenny uttered a deep grunt, and said afterwards in her old-fashioned way, "Oh John, what a foolish boy you are!" Then he kissed her and said, "Yes, Jen.

I always was.

You didn't half-teach me when I was young." This was after we had watched the wagon grow smaller and smaller in the distance on its way back, and after the great black had stood and looked down at me and laughed in his big, noisy way.
Then once more we were alone in the great desert, father looking proudly down at his little orchard, and Bob walking up and down touching every tree, and counting them over again.
"Begins to look homely now, Val," he said; "but we must work, boy-- work." We did work hard to make that place the home it grew to.
"It's for you, boys," he said, "when I'm dead and gone;" and it was about that time I began to think and understand more fully how father was doing it all for the sake of us boys, and to try and ease his heart-ache.

Aunt Jenny set me thinking by her words, and at last I fully grasped how it all was.
"I believe he'd have died broken-hearted, Val," she said to me, "if I hadn't come to him.

It was after your poor dear mother passed away.