From under the sheltering, shadowy brim of her hat Daphne shot an agonized glance at her father's half-averted face. But to her infinite astonishment her father's deep-set eyes were utterly serene, and even his shrewd mouth was relaxed at the moment into the faint ghost of a perfectly amiable smile.
"Old-Dad—are you deaf?" she gasped with a little quick clutch at his arm.
"When geese are cackling," said her father. 60
"And blind?" flared Daphne.
"When the view is offensive," admitted her father. With unwavering nonchalance he swung around suddenly to the nearest news stand and began then and there to pile Daphne's blue broadcloth arms with every funny paper in sight.
From lips quivering so that they could barely function their speech Daphne protested the action. "Why—why, Old-Dad," she pleaded. "Do you think for one single moment that I shall ever smile again? Or—or ever—even want to smile again?" In a fresh shiver of tears and shame the hot tears started to her eyes. "Why I'm nothing but—but just an outlaw!" she gasped. "A—a— sort of a——"
"Personally," conceded her father, "I'd infinitely rather travel with an outlaw than an inlaw! They're so inherently more considerate—somehow, so——" Quite imperturbably as he spoke he kept right on piling up the magazines in Daphne's protesting arms. "Steady there, Kiddie!" he admonished her smilingly. "Steady! Steady! Never let any sorrow you'll ever meet leak into 61 your chance to laugh! Water-tight your compartments—that's the idea! Love, Hope, Fear, Pride, Ambition—everything walled off and separate from another! And then if you run into a bit of bad weather now and then, Little Girl, you won't—" Aghast at the increasing tremor of the little figure he broke off abruptly in the midst of his message. "Why the only trouble with you, Daphne," he laughed, "is that you are so pretty! It's an awful responsibility I tell you to travel with a daughter who's so extravagantly pretty. So many complicating things are bound to happen all the time. Beaux, for instance, and——"
"Beaux?" winced Daphne.
"Such as the incipient one yonder," nodded her father.
Following the general direction of the nod the girl's eyes raked somewhat covertly but none the less thoroughly the shadow just back of the flower booth.