‘Yes; he is coming to meet me, it appears.  But, father,’ she said more softly and slowly, ’how wrong it will be for me to come so close to you, and never recognize you!  I don’t like it.  I wish you could have given up service by this time; it would have been so much less painful for us all round.  I thought we might have been able to manage it somehow.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Mr. Chickerel crossly.  ’There is not the least reason why I should give up.  I want to save a little money first.  If you don’t like me as I am, you must keep away from me.  Don’t be uneasy about my comfort; I am right enough, thank God.  I can mind myself for many a year yet.’

Ethelberta looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she did not speak.  She never could help crying when she met her father here.

‘I have been in service now for more than seven-and-thirty years,’ her father went on.  ’It is an honourable calling; and why should you maintain me because you can earn a few pounds by your gifts, and an old woman left you her house and a few sticks of furniture?  If she had left you any money it would have been a different thing, but as you have to work for every penny you get, I cannot think of it.  Suppose I should agree to come and live with you, and then you should be ill, or such like, and I no longer able to help myself?  O no, I’ll stick where I am, for here I am safe as to food and shelter at any rate.  Surely, Ethelberta, it is only right that I, who ought to keep you all, should at least keep your mother and myself?  As to our position, that we cannot help; and I don’t mind that you are unable to own me.’

‘I wish I could own you—­all of you.’

’Well, you chose your course, my dear; and you must abide by it.  Having put your hand to the plough, it will be foolish to turn back.’

’It would, I suppose.  Yet I wish I could get a living by some simple humble occupation, and drop the name of Petherwin, and be Berta Chickerel again, and live in a green cottage as we used to do when I was small.  I am miserable to a pitiable degree sometimes, and sink into regrets that I ever fell into such a groove as this.  I don’t like covert deeds, such as coming here to-night, and many are necessary with me from time to time.  There is something without which splendid energies are a drug; and that is a cold heart.  There is another thing necessary to energy, too—­the power of distinguishing your visions from your reasonable forecasts when looking into the future, so as to allow your energy to lay hold of the forecasts only.  I begin to have a fear that mother is right when she implies that I undertook to carry out visions and all.  But ten of us are so many to cope with.  If God Almighty had only killed off three-quarters of us when we were little, a body might have done something for the rest; but as we are it is hopeless!’

‘There is no use in your going into high doctrine like that,’ said Chickerel.  ’As I said before, you chose your course.  You have begun to fly high, and you had better keep there.’