Bernard Carrick did not seem to make much headway with his little daughter. She had been startled with his rudeness, though he was gentle enough now. But what with her mother, grandad, and Norah, who was the most charming of stepmothers, she felt he had enough care and attention. She was not going to sue for any favors.
"Daffodil," he said one pleasant day when they had been rambling round the old Block House, not so very old then, though it could count on over twenty years, "Daffodil, why can't you love me as well as you love great-grandfather. I think you scarcely love me at all."
She kicked some gravelly stones out of her path and looked over the river. It was all so beautiful then, no smoke to obscure it anywhere.
"They all love you, they're always wanting you. Grandad doesn't care for me any more. And he wasn't a bit glad when the news came. He went in the house saying it was a 'lee' and Norry said the black cat was on his back. It wasn't a real cat, but like those in the stories. And he stayed there all day. And he wouldn't believe you were coming home or that the war was ended."
"He hardly believes it yet;" laughing. "But he was glad to have me come back. And are you not a little glad?"
"You have all mother's gladness. And gran'mere's."
She made a funny little movement with her dimpled chin, that if she had been older would have been coquettish. Her lashes were long and a sort of bronze brown, and her eyes made a glitter through them. Barbe had been a very pretty girl but the child was not much like her mother only in certain dainty ways. And her blue eyes came from him. He was rather glad of that.
"Don't you want them to be glad that I am back?"
"Why?"—she looked up perplexed. She was not old enough to define her emotions. "Of course I should want them to be glad."
"Yet you are a little jealous."