"Lor', miss, he's kept by the Government. They has all the expense of him, and a powerful eater he ever do be!"

I did not inquire any further, but went on preparing the tea. When it was ready I brought it to Aunt Penelope.

"Do you know," I said, as I poured her out a cup, "that Jonas says his father is 'serving his time'? What does that mean?"

Aunt Penelope turned red and then white. Then she said, in a curious, restrained sort of voice:

"I wouldn't use that expression if I were you, Heather. It applies to people who are detained in prison."

"Oh!" I answered. Then I said, in a low tone, "I am very sorry for Jonas."

The next day father came back. Ten years is a very long time to have done without seeing your only living parent, and if father had been red and grizzled when last I beheld him, his hair was white now. Notwithstanding this fact, his eyes were as blue as ever, and he had the same jovial manner. He hugged and hugged me, and pushed me away from him and looked at me again, and then he hugged me once more, and said to Aunt Penelope:

"She does you credit, Penelope. She does, really and truly. When we have smartened her up a bit, and—oh! you know all about it, Penelope—she'll be as fine a girl as I ever saw."

"I have taught Heather to regard her clothes in the light in which the sacred Isaac Watts spoke of them," replied Aunt Penelope:

"Why should our garments, made to hide

Our parents' shame, provoke our pride?

Let me be dressed fine as I will,

Flies, flowers, and moths, exceed me still."

"That's a very ugly verse, if you will permit me to say so, Penelope," remarked my father, and then he dragged me down to sit on his knee.

He was wonderfully like his old self, and yet there was an extraordinary change in him. He used to be—at least the dream-father I had thought of all these years used to be—a very calm, self-contained man, never put out nor wanting in self-possession. But now he started at intervals and had an anxious, almost nervous manner. Aunt Penelope would not allow me to sit long on my father's knee.

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