"Phineas, how very strange it seems!" "What seems ?" "What ?--oh, everything." He hesitated a minute.

"No, not everything--but something which to me seems now to fill and be mixed up with all I do, or think, or feel.

Something you do not know--but to-night Ursula said I might tell you." Nevertheless he was several minutes before he told me.
"This pear-tree is full of fruit--is it not?
How thick they hang and yet it seems but yesterday that Ursula and I were standing here, trying to count the blossoms." He stopped--touching a branch with his hand.

His voice sank so I could hardly hear it.
"Do you know, Phineas, that when this tree is bare--we shall, if with God's blessing all goes well--we shall have--a little child." I wrung his hand in silence.
"You cannot imagine how strange it feels.

A child--hers and mine--little feet to go pattering about our house--a little voice to say--Think, that by Christmas-time I shall be a FATHER." He sat down on the garden-bench, and did not speak for a long time.
"I wonder," he said at last, "if, when I was born, MY father was as young as I am: whether he felt as I do now.