“I never said to human being that he had been unkind to me.”

“And yet you let every person in the village know it.”

“How?”

Her eye had no longer the stony glitter.  It flashed now.

“You are never seen together.  You scarcely speak when you meet.  Neither of you crosses the other’s threshold.”

“It is not my fault.”

“It is not all your fault, I know.  But do you think you can go to a heaven at last where you will be able to keep apart from each other, he in his house and you in your house, without any sign that it was through this father on earth that you were born into the world which the Father in heaven redeemed by the gift of His own Son?”

She was silent; and, after a pause, I went on.

“I believe, in my heart, that you love your father.  I could not believe otherwise of you.  And you will never be happy till you have made it up with him.  Have you done him no wrong?”

At these words, her face turned white—­with anger, I could see—­all but those spots on her cheek-bones, which shone out in dreadful contrast to the deathly paleness of the rest of her face.  Then the returning blood surged violently from her heart, and the red spots were lost in one crimson glow.  She opened her lips to speak, but apparently changing her mind, turned and walked haughtily out of the shop and closed the door behind her.

I waited, hoping she would recover herself and return; but, after ten minutes had passed, I thought it better to go away.

As I had told her, I was going to her father’s shop.

There I was received very differently.  There was a certain softness in the manner of the carpenter which I had not observed before, with the same heartiness in the shake of his hand which had accompanied my last leave-taking.  I had purposely allowed ten days to elapse before I called again, to give time for the unpleasant feelings associated with my interference to vanish.  And now I had something in my mind about young Tom.

“Have you got anything for your boy yet, Thomas?”

“Not yet, sir.  There’s time enough.  I don’t want to part with him just yet.  There he is, taking his turn at what’s going.  Tom!”

And from the farther end of the large shop, where I had not observed him, now approached young Tom, in a canvas jacket, looking quite like a workman.

“Well, Tom, I am glad to find you can turn your hand to anything.”

“I must be a stupid, sir, if I couldn’t handle my father’s tools,” returned the lad.

“I don’t know that quite.  I am not just prepared to admit it for my own sake.  My father is a lawyer, and I never could read a chapter in one of his books—­his tools, you know.”

“Perhaps you never tried, sir.”

“Indeed, I did; and no doubt I could have done it if I had made up my mind to it.  But I never felt inclined to finish the page.  And that reminds me why I called to-day.  Thomas, I know that lad of yours is fond of reading.  Can you spare him from his work for an hour or so before breakfast?”