"Good-evening," came the reply, in a rather agitated voice. "I'm Elizabeth."
"The deuce you are!"
Struck, not by the unfatherly, but by the ungentlemanly nature of his response, Stanwood promptly gathered himself together, to meet the situation.
"Pray come in and take a seat," he said; and then, falling into the prairie speech: "Where are you stopping?"
The tall young lady, who had entered, but who had not taken the proffered seat, looked at him a moment, and then she came toward him with a swift, impulsive movement, and said: "Why, papa, I don't believe you know me! I'm Elizabeth!"
"Yes, yes, oh, yes! I understand. But I thought perhaps you were paying a visit somewhere—some school friend, you know, or—or—yes—some school friend."
The girl was looking at him half bewildered, half solicitous. It was not the reception she had anticipated at the end of her two-thousand-mile journey. But then, this was not the man she had expected to see—this gaunt, ill-clad figure, with the worn, hollow-eyed face, and the gray hair. Why, her father was only fifty years old, yet the lines she saw were lines of age and suffering. Suddenly all her feeling of perplexity and chagrin and wounded pride was merged in a profound tenderness. She drew nearer, extending both her hands, placed them gently upon his shoulders and said: "Will you please to give me a kiss?"
Stanwood, much abashed, bent his head toward the blooming young face, and imprinted a perfunctory kiss upon the waiting lips. This unaccustomed exercise completed his discomfiture. For the first time in his life he felt himself unequal to a social emergency.
A curious sensation went over Elizabeth. Somehow she felt as if she had been kissed by a total stranger. She drew back and picked up her small belongings. For a moment Stanwood thought she was going.
"Don't you get your mail out here any more?" she asked.