"But he won't, dear. You haven't behaved to him like your father behaved to you," said Winny, calmly.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. At any rate, you will know presently when you can look at it as it reelly is. Nobody could have done more for your father than you did. If he'd been the best father in the world you couldn't have done more."
"Doin' things is nothing. Besides, I didn't. D'you know, I wouldn't go into his business when he wanted me to? I wouldn't do it, just because I couldn't bear bein' with him all the time. And he knew it."
"I don't care if he did know it, Ranny. You'd a perfect right to live your own life. You'd a right to choose what you'd do and where you'd be. As it was, you never had any life of your own where your father was about. I can remember how it was, dear, if you don't. If you'd given in because he wanted you to; if you'd been boxed up with him down there from morning till night, you'd never have had any life at all. Not as much as that! And then, instead of caring for him as you did, you'd have got to hate him, and then he'd have hated you; and your mother would have been torn between you. That's how it would have been, and you knew it. Else you'd never have left him."
"I say—fancy your knowin' all that!"
"Of course I know it. I knew it all the time."
"Who told you?"
"You don't have to be told things like that, Ranny."
The hand she was stroking moved from under her hand and caught it and grasped it tight.