gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways
and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in
your twilight like evening primroses.

Is it not strange that, though I talk thus plainly to David about
his mother, he still seems to think me fond of her? How now, I
reflect, what sort of bumpkin is this, and perhaps I say to him
cruelly: "Boy, you are uncommonly like your mother."

To which David: "Is that why you are so kind to me?"

I suppose I am kind to him, but if so it is not for love of his
mother, but because he sometimes calls me father. On my honour
as a soldier, there is nothing more in it than that. I must not
let him know this, for it would make him conscious, and so break
the spell that binds him and me together. Oftenest I am but
Captain W---- to him, and for the best of reasons. He addresses me
as father when he is in a hurry only, and never have I dared ask
him to use the name. He says, "Come, father," with an accursed
beautiful carelessness. So let it be, David, for a little while
longer.

I like to hear him say it before others, as in shops. When in
shops he asks the salesman how much money he makes in a day, and
which drawer he keeps it in, and why his hair is red, and does he
like Achilles, of whom David has lately heard, and is so
enamoured that he wants to die to meet him. At such times the
shopkeepers accept me as his father, and I cannot explain the
peculiar pleasure this gives me. I am always in two minds then,
to linger that we may have more of it, and to snatch him away