“How do you mean? Does anyone else know it?”
“I may have written to one or two girls at home, Daddy. You know girls are always fond of such foolishness.”
“Had you not better write to them and tell them not to mention it.”
“Good Gracious! Why you dear, old goose of a Daddy it is evident you don’t know girls. That would be the very way to make things buzz. Oh no! we’ll simply drop it; and they’ll soon forget it. I may have to tell them something else, though, to draw them away from it.”
“Hm!” said her father. She looked at him with a sly archness:
“I suppose, Daddy, it wouldn’t do to have it that an Italian Grand Duke proposed for me—to you of course!”
“Certainly not, Miss Impudence! I’m not to be drawn into any of your foolish girls’ chatter. There, run away and let me smoke in peace!” She turned away, but came back.
“Am I forgiven, Daddy?”
“Forgiven! Lord bless the child, why there’s nothing to forgive. I only caution. I know well that my little girl is clear grit, straight through; and I trust her as I do myself. Why Joy, darling” he put his arm affectionately round her shoulder “you are my little girl! The only one I have or ever shall have; and so, God willing, you shall be to me to the end.”
“Thank you dear, dear Daddy. And I pray so too. I shall always be your little girl to you and shall come to you to cheer you or to be comforted myself. Mother has of late taken to treating me like a grown-up which she always keeps firing off at me so that I don’t know whether I am myself or not. But whatever I am to anyone else, I never shall be anything to you but your ‘little girl!’”