He was not young, but he was not yet old.

"I haven't," said the girl sullenly.

He sighed at her perverseness. "That's not the way I remember it. I'm
sure, from the time ye were quite a wee one, ye have always tried to
please me.--We all come short sometimes; the thing is, what we are
trying to do."

He spoke as if her antagonism to what he had been saying, to what he was
yet saying, had had a painful effect upon him which he was endeavouring
to hide.

The girl looked over his head at the smoke that was proceeding from the
log-house chimney. She saw it curl and wreathe itself against the cold
blue east. It was white wood smoke, and as she watched it began to turn
yellow in the light from the sunset. She did not turn to see whence the
yellow ray came.

"Now that father's dead, I won't stay here, Mr. Bates." She said "I
won't" just as a sullen, naughty girl would speak. "'Twas hateful enough
to stay while he lived, but now you and Miss Bates are nothing to me."

"Nothing to ye, Sissy?" The words seemed to come out of him in pained
surprise.

"I know you've brought me up, and taught me, and been far kinder to me
than father ever was; but I'm not to stay here all my life because of
_that_."