“Is it?”
“As much as she can do any honest fellow. Tod, if you were to lapse into crooked paths, you’d break the good old pater’s heart. There’s nobody in the world he cares for as he cares for you.”
Tod sat twitching his whiskers. I could not understand his mood: all the carelessness and the fierceness had quite gone out of him.
“It’s the thought of the father that pulls me up, lad. What a cross-grained world it is! Why should a bit of pleasure be hedged in with thorns?”
“If we don’t go to bed we shall not be up for chapel.”
“You can go to bed.”
“Why do you drive her out, Tod?”
“Why does the sun shine?” was the lucid answer.
“I saw you with her in that gig to-day.”