hole that, and
I couldn't for ye. Ye have no one to protect ye now but me. I've no
friends to send ye to. What do ye know of the world? It's unkind--ay,
and it's wicked too."

"How's it so wicked? You're not wicked, nor father, nor me, nor the
men--how's people outside so much wickeder?"

Bates's mouth--it was a rather broad, powerful mouth--began to grow hard
at her continued contention, perhaps also at the thought of the evils of
which he dreamed. "It's a very _evil_ world," he said, just as he would
have said that two and two made four to a child who had dared to
question that fact. "Ye're too young to understand it now: ye must take
my word for it."

She made no sort of answer; she gave no sign of yielding; but, because
she had made no answer, he, self-willed and opinionated man that he was,
felt assured that she had no answer to give, and went on to talk as if
that one point were settled.

"Ye can be happy here if ye will only think so. If we seem hard on ye in
the house about the meals and that, I'll try to be better tempered. Ye
haven't read all the books we have yet, but I'll get more the first
chance if ye like. Come, Sissy, think how lonesome I'd be without ye!"

He moved his shoulders nervously while he spoke, as if the effort to
coax was a greater strain than the effort to teach or command. His
manner might have been that of a father who wheedled a child to do
right, or a lover who sued on his own behalf; the better love, for that
matter, is much the same in all relations of life.

This last plea evidently moved her just a little. "I'm sorry, Mr.
Bates," she said.

"What are ye sorry for, Sissy?"

"That I'm to leave you."

"But ye're not going. Can't ye get that out of your head? How will ye
go?"

"In the boat, when they take father."

At that the first flash of anger came from him. "Ye won't go, if I have
to hold ye by main force. I can't go to bury your father. I have to stay
here and earn bread and butter for you and me, or we'll come short of
it. If ye think I'm going to let ye go with a man I know little about--"

His voice broke off in indignation, and as for the girl, whether from
sudden anger at being thus spoken to, or from the conviction of
disappointment which had been slowly forcing itself upon her, she began
to cry. His anger vanished, leaving an evident discomfort behind. He
stood before her with a weary look of effort on his face, as if he were
casting all things in heaven and