"Gone back to London."
"Joy go with her, she was a bad 'un. An' the cunning old witch, the mother?"
"Has left Hadstone never to return."
"An' the old place. What have they done with it?"
"It is open to receive you, father, when you return with me. I will soon make it bright and cosy again."
"Ah, well a day, Dolly. I hardly wish to see it again. It will only remind me o' happier days, o' a wife that I loved with my whole heart, o' a son that I can consider mine no longer. Who would ha' thought that such an excellent mother could ha' been parent to such a graceless bairn; that a good beginning should make such a sorry ending? Na, Dorothy, I cannot go back; even the bright black eyed lass, who might ha' been my daughter, but for my folly, is going to carry joy an' sunshine into another home. Let me bide, Dorothy, where I be! I can die as well here as in the old homestead."
"I cannot lose my dear old father yet. Where I am, there shall always be a warm nook by the fireside for him."
"Dolly, my darling, thou art one in a thousand. Yes, I will go with you. Reach me my hat and staff."
The shrewd man of business thought with the yeoman that Dorothy was one in a thousand, and was not a little affected by her filial piety. He then accompanied Dorothy and her charge to the inn, and ordered a good dinner at his own expense, for the refreshments of the travellers. Over a glass of excellent home brewed, he told Rushmere of the hopes he entertained of securing Mrs. Knight's large bequest for the beautiful foundling. This news, however gratifying to the old man, on Dorothy's account, only served to increase the deep regret that was ever brooding in his mind, that his unreasonable obstinacy had been the cause of Gilbert's ruin and his own.
It was night when they got to Heath Farm.