Before she let him go in she said hesitatingly; “Pa, I am going away; she is cross to you on my account, and—and—oh, pa, I do want to go to school; there’s so much that I want to know!” she said breathlessly.
He stood as though stunned: “What shall I do without you?” he cried despairingly.
Thella trembled with excitement; her heart was torn between the desire to go and the longing to remain; how could she leave her poor, heartbroken old father? but—she honestly believed that she—Thella never called her anything else if she could avoid it—would be less unkind to pa, if she were gone. Thella knew very well that a rancorous jealousy added force to her misuse of him; and—oh, she could not go on in this way; empty day dreams no longer sufficed her bright intelligence; she hungered and thirsted for knowledge; he had a vague understanding of higher and better things than met her everyday sight. She could no longer keep her eyes earthward; even when she cast them down for one instant, all things spoke to her of that higher life, and filled her with unutterable longing. Something of this she tried to tell pa between her sobs.
He let his hand wander gently over her crown of hair, as he said, “Yes—yes, daughter; I know how you feel. I used to have just such thoughts, and ma—your ma—used to make me feel as though I could see right up into God’s heart, and I knew—I knew—that I could live well enough to reach Him, sometime, I should if ma hadn’t have died; but now—I just have to make the best of it,” he finished despondently.
“But pa, hadn’t you ought to try now—for ma’s sake?”
“How can I? I never have time even to think. No, no, daughter, I must just make the best of it,” he reiterated wearily.
She had no words of comfort that had not in them a sound of mockery, so she said nothing beyond thanking him for his consent, and as she kissed him lovingly, she patted his withered cheek with her toil-roughened palms: “Poor pa! Poor pa! I love you dearly,” she said.
A tear stole down his furrowed face and wet her hands; he tremblingly murmured, “God bless my daughter!”
The next morning Mrs. Armitage screamed in vain to Thella:
“Drat her, I’ll take a strap to her, if she’s bigger’n the side of a house.”