The aged master inclined his hoary head for an instant on my father’s shoulder, and pressed my hand.
We entered the station. The train was on the point of starting.
“Farewell, master!” said my father, kissing him on both cheeks.
“Farewell! thanks! farewell!” replied the master, taking one of my father’s hands in his two trembling hands, and pressing it to his heart.
Then I kissed him and felt that his face was bathed in tears. My father pushed me into the railway carriage, and at the moment of starting he quickly removed the coarse cane from the schoolmaster’s hand, and in its place he put his own handsome one, with a silver handle and his initials, saying, “Keep it in memory of me.”
The old man tried to return it and to recover his own; but my father was already inside and had closed the door.
“Farewell, my kind master!”
“Farewell, my son!” responded the master as the train moved off; “and may God bless you for the consolation which you have afforded to a poor old man!”
“Until we meet again!” cried my father, in a voice full of emotion.
But the master shook his head, as much as to say, “We shall never see each other more.”