"May I go down across the bridge, papa?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, and then as she tripped away, said:
"She's one of my adopted children." He gazed between his knees at the sidewalk.
"Have you many others?"
"Three."
"Raising them, are you?"
"Yes."
"They seem to think, down in Noank, that living as you do and giving everything away is satisfactory to you but rather hard on your wife and children."
"Well, it is true that she did feel a little uncertain in the beginning, but she's never wanted for anything. She'll tell you herself that she's never been without a thing that she really needed, and she's been happy."
He paused to meditate, I presume, over the opinion of his former fellow townsmen, and then added: