"All the better."
"Please let me go, father!"
"What good could a little chap like you do?"
"Take care of you, father!"
"Ha, ha! Capital! I hope to take care of myself, dear boy."
"But, father, you want me to be brave, like you, when I come to be a man. How can I be, unless I look on, and see what brave men do?"
Speckbacher felt his throat swell. He turned about, took the boy in his arms, lifted him up from the ground, and kissed him several times.
"There," said he. "Go home now, like a good boy. Another time."
There was a tear on the little boy's cheek as he stood watching the retreating figure—a tear that had not fallen from his own eyes. He brushed it off—looked at it—and then trotted away into the brushwood; from whence, as he kept running along, he could get glimpses of his father, himself unseen. Once he saw Speckbacher pause and look back; perhaps to see if his little boy had obeyed him and gone home. After that, he never looked back again; he pressed forward to the things that were before him.
The young boy still went on; his short, quick steps keeping pretty well up with his father's strides. Children that walk much with their parents generally step out well. Now and then he had to force his way among the bushes, or go a little way round; for which he made up afterwards by running. He had no settled purpose, except just to keep his father a little longer in sight.