The Father

The father is a quiet, practical man who works for the railroad. The fact that his sons look up to him is clear from the way that the narrator refers to funny stories his father sometimes told as an example of something interesting that would happen in his otherwise boring day.

At times, the father seems to be in collusion with his sons against the moral strictness of their mother. He tells stories that might be inappropriate for children, a point that his wife has to interrupt to remind him of. He notices the mud on Gilly's pants but does not point it out to their mother, in order to keep them from getting into trouble: what is more, he has covered for them before. At the end of the story, the narrator assumes that his father feels the same way that he does that the best...