I rose, feeling very trembly about the knees. There was nothing that I could do. I could not let poor Daddy worry any longer about me.
"Come for me, Yves," I told the man, "if he seems worse, or if there is anything I can do."
He came to me, and I saw that his eyes were full of tears as I put my hand out to him. He lifted it up to his lips with a sob.
So we two hurried back home. By this time the wind had abated a little, and the moon was shining through some great rifts in the clouds, the waters of the cove reflecting a shiny path. The road was no longer in darkness; I could see it dimly, rising to higher ground.
I will write again very soon,
Your loving
HELEN.
CHAPTER XVII
From Mr. Walter B. Jelliffe to Miss Jane Van Zandt
My dear Jennie:
You know I'm no great hand at letter writing when I have no stenographer at hand. It may not be courteous of me to say I am writing to you because I am the lonesomest old party you have seen in a half a century, but you have your dear sister's sweet disposition, and I know you will forgive me. I am all alone in this packing-box of a house, when I expected to be at sea and sailing for Newport to say how d'you do on my way to New York. I wanted to have the pleasure of seeing your kindly face and of having you take that niece of yours in hand for a time. The girl is getting beyond me, and when I want to bluster she looks at me just as her mother used to and I get so weak that you could knock me over with a feather. She looks so much like Dorothy that sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure it is not her mother sitting at the other end of the table.
When a man is sixty, and begins to think he owns his fair share of the earth, or even a bit more, I daresay that it does him good to be humbled a little, but it's a hard thing to become used to. Hitherto when Helen wanted anything I always let her have it, for on the whole she has always been sensible in her desires and requests, or maybe I have been an old fool. Didn't some Frenchman say once that an old man is a fellow who thinks himself wise because he's been a fool longer than other people? Anyway, that's me! For the last few days I have been itching to scrap with her, and I find she minds me about as much as the man in the moon.