She put it back.

'Here! and give me hold of the sculls. I'll take the rest of the spell.'

'No, no, father! No! I can't indeed. Father!--I cannot sit so near it!'

He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified
expostulation stopped him and he resumed his seat.

'What hurt can it do you?'

'None, none. But I cannot bear it.'

'It's my belief you hate the sight of the very river.'

'I--I do not like it, father.'

'As if it wasn't your living! As if it wasn't meat and drink to you!'

At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment paused
in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention,
for he was glancing over the stern at something the boat had in tow.

'How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very
fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of the river
alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide
washed ashore. The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle
of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or
another.'