"Did you, John? I gave up hope years ago. How did it come about, John?"
"Mrs. Walsham told me as I came out of church to-day that she wanted to speak to me, so I went down, and she told me all about it, and then I saw him—"
John hesitated at the name, for he knew that perhaps the only man in the world against whom his master cherished a bitter resentment was the father of his son's wife.
"It seems he never saw your advertisements, never knew you wanted to hear anything of the child, so he took her away and kept her. He has been here off and on all these years. I heard of him often and often when I had been down into Sidmouth, but never dreamt it was him. He went about the country with a box on wheels with glasses—a peep-show they call it."
The squire winced.
"He is well spoken of, squire," John said, "and I am bound to say he doesn't seem the sort of man we took him for at all. He did not know that you wanted to have her, but he thought it his duty to give her the chance, and so he put her with Mrs. Walsham, and never told her till yesterday who she was. Mrs. Walsham was quite grieved at parting with her, for she says she is wonderfully quick at her lessons, and has been like a daughter with her for the last two years."
THE CHILD'S RETURN.—III.
The child had sat quietly down in a chair and was looking into the fire while the two men were speaking. She had done what she had been told to do, and was waiting quietly for what was to come next. Her quick ear, however, noticed that John Petersham spoke of her old grandfather as though he needed to be excused for something, and she was moved to instant anger.
"Why do you speak like that of my grampa?" she said, rising to her feet and standing indignantly before him. "He is the best man in the world, and the kindest and the nicest, and if you don't like him I can go away to him again. I don't want to stay here, not one minute.
"You may be my grandpapa," she went on, turning to the squire, "and you may be lonely, but he is lonely too, and you have got a great house and all sorts of nice things, and you can do better without me than he can, for he has got nothing to love but me, poor grampa!" and her eyes filled with sudden tears as she thought of him tramping on his lonely walks over the hills.