There was all the sorrow of the forsaken in the dazed shrinking look Ann gave him. "Yes, I've grown up," she said in tones as colorless as her face. "But I know you--you look like grandpa." He bent and kissed her cheek, then took his hands from her shoulders, and he said what Sue had said: "And you are a Penniman, too, Ann--we're all Pennimans--we'll never outgrow that.... How are you, child?" "I am well, suh." "And Cousin Sue and Uncle Will?" "They are well--they are expectin' you." Coats Penniman took up his bag and they turned into the woods. Ann's eyes were fixed straight before her. Things looked curiously white and unreal, as they do after a shock. Her father looked at her as they went on, at her proud brow and eyes, then at her softly-rounded chin and warm mouth, reminders of her mother, and, again, the deepening lines in his face made him look old. "I'm glad you came to meet me," he said kindly. And Ann answered to the note of kindness, just as she had always answered to the same note in Sue's voice, by an offer of service. "Can't I carry your satchel for you, father? You've walked so far." "No, Ann, I've not come home to be waited on.... There're going to be better times at the farm, now I have come home. Until the last year I haven't had the means to make it easier for you all. For fourteen years I've prayed to make money, and then, all at once, when I'd given up hope, it came. For your sake, and for Sue's sake, I wish it had come sooner." He spoke with a deep note of feeling. "It has been hard for Aunt Sue," Ann said tonelessly. She felt numb and sick; she was more conscious of a feeling of illness than of anything else. The necessity of walking steadily on when she wanted simply to hide herself somewhere, was infinitely painful. Sue had said, "If Coats seems like a stranger to you, don't you feel hard to him." He did not seem like a stranger to her, any more than her grandfather did, or even her aunt did, at times. But he did not seem like her father, any more than they did. From the height of her isolation, Ann could even look at him calmly. His dark face had lighted, now that he was looking about him. "Uncle Will has not cut down the trees--every tree is here--just as it used to be," he said with deep satisfaction. "I was afraid he'd had to make cord-wood of them.... How well I remember it all!" he added, half eagerly, half sadly. He walked faster, until they reached the open, and then he stopped. "The house and the barn ... and the spring-house!" he said. "Not a stick or a stone changed! My, my!... And fourteen long years!... When I went, I never wanted to see it again, but it has pulled at me, just the same. It's brought me back."