Under such affectionate treatment I betrayed the alarming symptom that my imagination was set more on my mother than on my father:  I could not help thinking that for any one to go to heaven was stranger than to drive to Dipwell, and I had this idea when my father was clasping me in his arms; but he melted it like snow off the fields.  He came with postillions in advance of him wearing crape rosettes, as did the horses.  We were in the cricket-field, where Dipwell was playing its first match of the season, and a Dipwell lad, furious to see the elevens commit such a breach of the rules and decency as to troop away while the game was hot, and surround my father, flung the cricket-ball into the midst and hit two or three of the men hard.  My father had to shield him from the consequences.  He said he liked that boy; and he pleaded for him so winningly and funnily that the man who was hurt most laughed loudest.

Standing up in the carriage, and holding me by the hand, he addressed them by their names:  ’Sweetwinter, I thank you for your attention to my son; and you, Thribble; and you, my man; and you, Baker; Rippengale, and you; and you, Jupp’; as if he knew them personally.  It was true he nodded at random.  Then he delivered a short speech, and named himself a regular subscriber to their innocent pleasures.  He gave them money, and scattered silver coin among the boys and girls, and praised John Thresher, and Martha, his wife, for their care of me, and pointing to the chimneys of the farm, said that the house there was holy to him from henceforth, and he should visit it annually if possible, but always in the month of May, and in the shape of his subscription, as certain as the cowslip.  The men, after their fit of cheering, appeared unwilling to recommence their play, so he alighted and delivered the first ball, and then walked away with my hand in his, saying: 

’Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for you.  The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell while I last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone.  And now to see the bed you have slept in.’

Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted, and a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.

‘Ha!’ said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings:  ’madam, I am your life-long debtor and friend!’ He kissed her on the cheek.

John Thresher cried out:  ‘Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.’

She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our departure.  John stood like a soldier.  We drove away from a cheering crowd of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great gun.  ’A royal salvo!’ said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I had forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my friends.  I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true, until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view