But, as you said, we've been parted for a very long time, and it isn't in a day that we can come to understand each other.

These seventeen years have made an old man of me, Jo; I think and speak and act slowly:--better for us all if I had learned to do so long ago! Your coming was unexpected; I shall need a little time to get used to the change it makes.' 'To be sure; that's true enough.

Plenty of time to talk over things.

As far as I'm concerned, father, the less said about bygones the better; it's the future that I care about now.

I want to put things right between us--as they ought to be between father and son.