Coats Penniman took up his bag and they turned into the woods. Ann's eyes were fixed straight before her. Things looked curiously white and unreal, as they do after a shock. Her father looked at her as they went on, at her proud brow and eyes, then at her softly-rounded chin and warm mouth, reminders of her mother, and, again, the deepening lines in his face made him look old. "I'm glad you came to meet me," he said kindly.
And Ann answered to the note of kindness, just as she had always answered to the same note in Sue's voice, by an offer of service. "Can't I carry your satchel for you, father? You've walked so far."
"No, Ann, I've not come home to be waited on.... There're going to be better times at the farm, now I have come home. Until the last year I haven't had the means to make it easier for you all. For fourteen years I've prayed to make money, and then, all at once, when I'd given up hope, it came. For your sake, and for Sue's sake, I wish it had come sooner." He spoke with a deep note of feeling.
"It has been hard for Aunt Sue," Ann said tonelessly.
She felt numb and sick; she was more conscious of a feeling of illness than of anything else. The necessity of walking steadily on when she wanted simply to hide herself somewhere, was infinitely painful. Sue had said, "If Coats seems like a stranger to you, don't you feel hard to him." He did not seem like a stranger to her, any more than her grandfather did, or even her aunt did, at times. But he did not seem like her father, any more than they did. From the height of her isolation, Ann could even look at him calmly.
His dark face had lighted, now that he was looking about him. "Uncle Will has not cut down the trees—every tree is here—just as it used to be," he said with deep satisfaction. "I was afraid he'd had to make cord-wood of them.... How well I remember it all!" he added, half eagerly, half sadly. He walked faster, until they reached the open, and then he stopped. "The house and the barn ... and the spring-house!" he said. "Not a stick or a stone changed! My, my!... And fourteen long years!... When I went, I never wanted to see it again, but it has pulled at me, just the same. It's brought me back."
He turned slowly, half circled to look about him, his eyes finally fixed on the nobly solemn line of cedars. He looked at them long and steadily; he lifted his hat and took it off. "'For better or for worse' ... and so it has been—" His face was wiped of expression; his momentary excitement gone.
"He is thinking of my mother," Ann thought.
He stood a moment longer, motionless, then put on his hat, drawing the brim low over his eyes, and went on, forgetful of his surroundings, and of Ann. Perhaps it was habit that guided him, for he took the usual way, across the field and up the path between the grapevines, and Ann dropped behind; when he went into the house, she could escape.
But Sue had seen them coming. Sue who never ran, who was wont to go about wearily, ran down the kitchen stairs and her father followed, slowly, holding to the stair-rail. Sue sped across the few yards that separated them. "Coats!" she said, "oh, Coats!" and Coats Penniman dropped his bag and opened his arms to her.