We had just finished, and were talking it over, when who should come across the garden but our father? We had not seen him in a good while, and there was something so kind in his look and manner, that we started at once to meet him.
“So you have not quite forgotten me,” he said, as Jennie kissed him and I clung to his hand.
“We can never do that, pa.” He sat down on the rock and held us to him, with his arms close around us.
“Are you willing to come home, Marston? You are getting to be a large boy, and can help me now; and I am going to try to do better.”
Had it not been for my new mother I should have jumped at the idea of going with my father; but when I thought of her my heart struggled against it. Again Mr. Kirby’s words came to my mind: “Do right, Marston.” Something told me it was right, if my father was trying to make a better man, to help him. So I answered resolutely,
“If you think it best, father; but I want to go to school, and do something better by and by.”
“That is what I want you to do, my son; and I will try and help you.”
He was sober, and spoke so kindly, we both cried when he kissed us good-by, and said he knew he had not been as good to us as he ought to have been since we had no mother. Dear father, it was a long time since we had seen him so kind; and it was to be a still longer time before we should see him so kind again.
“You will come down to-morrow night, children.”
“Yes, father.”