“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,