At first he could not speak, but he put his arm round her and drew her head up to his breast—and, with all the love and tenderness he had lavished upon her all her life, she had never known such love and tenderness as he expressed in this one movement.
"Louisianny," he said, brokenly, when he had found his voice, "it's you as should be a-forgivin' me."
"I!" she exclaimed.
He held her in his trembling arm so close that she felt his heart quivering.
"To think," he almost whispered, "as I should not hev ben doin' ye jestice! To think as I didn't know ye well enough to do ye jestice! To think yer own father, thet's knowed ye all yer life, could hev give in to its bein' likely as ye wasn't—what he'd allers thought, an' what yer mother 'd thought, an' what ye was, honey."
"I don't——" she began falteringly.
"It's me as oughter be a-standin' agin the door," he said. "It's me! I knowed every word of the first part of what ye've told me, Louisianny. I've been so sot on ye thet I've got into a kinder noticin' way with ye, an' I guessed it out. I seen it in yer face when ye stood thar tryin' to laugh on the porch while them people was a-waitin'. 'Twa'n't no nat'ral gal's laugh ye laughed, and when ye thought I wasn't a-noticin' I was a-noticin' an' a-thinkin' all the time. But I seen more than was thar, honey, an' I didn't do ye jestice—an' I've ben punished fer it. It come agin me like a slungshot. I ses to myself, 'She's ashamed o' me! It's me she's ashamed of—an' she wants to pass me off fer a stranger!'"
The girl drew off from him a little and looked up into his face wonderingly.
"You thought that!" she said. "And never told me—and humored me, and——"
"I'd oughter knowed ye better," he said; "but I've suffered fer it, Louisianny. I ses to myself, 'All the years thet we've ben sot on each other an' nussed each other through our little sick spells, an' keered fer each other, lies gone fer nothin'. She wants to pass me off fer a stranger.' Not that I blamed ye, honey. Lord! I knowed the difference betwixt us! I'd knowed it long afore you did. But somehow it warn't eggsakly what I looked fer an' it was kinder hard on me right at the start. An' then the folks went away an' ye didn't go with 'em, an' thar was somethin' workin' on ye as I knowed ye wasn't ready to tell me about. An' I sot an' steddied it over an' watched ye, an' I prayed some, an' I laid wake nights a-steddyin'. An' I made up my mind thet es I'd ben the cause o' trouble to ye I'd oughter try an' sorter balance the thing. I allers 'lowed parents hed a duty to their child'en. An' I ses, 'Thar's some things thet kin be altered an' some thet cayn't. Let's alter them es kin!'"