“Come, come,” he said. “You haven’t lost much in losing him. I know all about it; he never went to see you all these years, and didn’t care a jot whether you lived or died, as far as any one could see. And it’s all nonsense to pretend you’re sorry, you know. How can you be sorry for a father you don’t remember?”
“Oh,” said Freda, with a sob, “can’t you understand? You can love a person without knowing him, just as we love God, whom we can never see till we die.”
“Well, but I suppose you love God, because you think He’s good to you.”
“We believe He is, even when He allows things to happen to us which seem cruel. And my father being, as I am afraid he was, an unhappy man, was perhaps afraid of making me unhappy too. And he did send for me at last, remember.”
“Yes, in a fit of annoyance over something—I forget what.”
“How do you know that he hadn’t really some other motive in his heart?” said Freda, down whose cheeks the tears were fast rolling. “He was a stern man, everybody says, who didn’t show his feelings. So that at last he grew perhaps ashamed to show them.”
“More likely hadn’t got any worth speaking of,” said the man gruffly.
“It’s not very nice or right of you to speak ill of your master, when he’s de-ad,” quavered Freda.
“Well, it’s very silly of you to make such a fuss about him when he’s de-ad,” mimicked the man.
Although he spoke without much feeling of his late master, and although he was somewhat uncouth of speech, manner and appearance, Freda did not dislike this man. As might have been expected, she confounded bluntness with honesty in the conventional manner. Therefore she bore even his little jibes without offence. There was a pause, however, after his last words. Then he asked, rather curiously: