"Those were happy days when father was alive!"
"You may say so, lad! Such days as will never come again to me, at
any rate." She sighed sorrowfully.
"Mother!" said he at last, stopping short, and taking her hand in
his with tender affection, "you'd like me to be as happy a man as my
father was before me, would not you? You'd like me to have some one
to make me as happy as you made father? Now, would you not, dear
mother?"
"I did not make him as happy as I might ha' done," murmured she, in
a low, sad voice of self-reproach. "Th' accident gave a jar to my
temper it's never got the better of; and now he's gone where he can
never know how I grieve for having frabbed him as I did."
"Nay, mother, we don't know that!" said Jem, with gentle soothing.
"Anyhow, you and father got along with as few rubs as most people.
But for HIS sake, dear mother, don't say me nay, now that I come to
you to ask your blessing before setting out to see her, who is to be
my wife, if ever woman is; for HIS sake, if not for mine, love her
whom I shall bring home to be to me all you were to him: and, mother!
I do not ask for a truer or a tenderer heart than yours is, in the
long run.
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