“A wee bit, honey,” confessed Mrs. Sherwood.
“Let me take the pins out and rub your poor head, dear,” said Nan. “You know, I'm a famous 'massagist.' Come do, dear.”
“If you like, honey.”
Thus it was that, a little later, when Mr. Sherwood came home with feet that dragged more than usual on this evening, he opened the door upon a very beautiful picture indeed.
His wife's hair was “a glory of womanhood,” for it made a tent all about her, falling quite to the floor as she sat in her low chair. Out of this canopy she looked up at the brawny, serious man, roguishly.
“Am I not a lazy, luxurious person, Papa Sherwood?” she demanded. “Nan is becoming a practical maid, and I presume I put upon the child dreadfully, she is good-natured, like you, Robert.”
“Aye, I know our Nan gets all her good qualities from me, Jessie,” said her husband. “If she favored you she would, of course, be a very hateful child.”
He kissed his wife tenderly. As Nan said, he always “cleaned up” at the mills and “came home kissable.”
“I ought to be just next door to an angel, if I absorbed the virtues of both my parents,” declared Nan briskly, beginning to braid the wonderful hair which she had already brushed. “I often think of that.”
Her father poked her tentatively under the shoulder blades with a blunt forefinger, making her squirm.