"Oh, don't be so good to me," she said. "Don't be so good and kind."
He went on as quietly as before.
"If—fur instants—it was me as was to be altered, Louisianny, I'm afeared—I'm afeared we couldn't do it. I'm afeared as I've been let run too long—jest to put it that way. We mought hev done it if we'd hev begun airlier—say forty or fifty year back—but I'm afeared we couldn't do it now. Not as I wouldn't be willin'—I wouldn't hev a thing agin it, an' I'd try my best—but it's late. Thar's whar it is. If it was me as hed to be altered—made more moderner, an' to know more, an' to hev more style—I'm afeared thar'd be a heap o' trouble. Style didn't never seem to come nat'ral to me, somehow. I'm one o' them things as cayn't be altered. Let's alter them as kin."
"I don't want you altered," she protested. "Oh! why should I, when you are such a good father—such a dear father!"
And there was a little silence again, and at the end of it he said, in a gentle, forbearing voice, just as he had said before:
"Don't ye, Louisianny?"
They sat silent again for some time afterward—indeed, but little more was said until they separated for the night. Then, when she kissed him and clung for a moment round his neck, he suddenly roused himself from his prolonged reverie.
"Lord!" he said, quite cheerfully, "it caynt last long, at the longest, arter all—an' you're young yet, you're young."
"What can't last long?" she asked, timidly.
He looked into her eyes and smiled.