"Loved your ma? Well, I did love her. The old house has never been the same since she went out of it."
"Then you'll let me go up alone and see grandpa? That is what mamma said I was to do."
Mrs. Osgood hesitated a moment, then love and memory triumphed over fear, and she said,—
"Yes, you shall. Heaven forbid I should hinder you! Go right upstairs and open the first door."
The man who had come with her sat down in the hall to wait, and the little figure, with its gleaming, golden hair, tripped on alone.
She opened the door softly, and went in. She did not speak; perhaps the stern-looking old man sitting there awed her to silence. She just stepped up to him and handed him a letter. He took it, scarcely noticing, so busy was he with his thoughts, at the hand of what strange messenger. He looked at the outside. It was his daughter's writing. Ten years ago he had sent her last letter back unopened; but this one,—what influence apart from himself moved him to read it? It was not long, but it commenced with "Dear father." He had never been a dear father to her, he thought.
She had waited all these silent years, she told him, because she was determined never to write to him again until they were rich enough for him to know that she did not write from any need of his help. They had passed these ten years in the West, and Heaven had prospered them. Her husband was a rich man, now; and she wanted from her father only his love,—wanted only that death should not come between them, and either of them go to her mother's side without having been reconciled to the other.
"Let her lips speak to you from the grave," she wrote; "her lips, which you must have loved once, and which never grew old or lost their youth's brightness,—let them plead with you to be reconciled to her child. Surely, you will not turn away from the messenger I send,—your own grandchild."
The messenger,—he had forgotten about her. He turned and she was standing there, like a spirit, on his hearthstone, with her white face and her gleaming golden hair. He looked at her, and saw her father's broad, full brow and thoughtful eyes, and below them the sweetness of her mother's smile. His grandchild—his! His heart throbbed chokingly. He grew hungry to clasp her,—to feel her soft arms clinging round his neck, her tender lips kissing away the furrows of his hard life from his face. But he feared to startle her. He tried to speak gently,—he, to whom gentleness was so new and strange.