"Miss Merriwayne's crazy about him," quickened Daphne. "All the girls say so! Everybody——"
"U—m—m," mused her father. "Well, I think you'll hear from him again!"
"Yes, I think I'll hear from him again," monotoned Daphne. Quite suddenly her teeth began to chatter and the eyes that lifted to his were like the eyes of a frightened fawn.
"I feel so little," she whispered. "Even in this big coat I feel so little—and so cold! I never sat in anybody's lap," she stammered desperately, "and—and as long as you didn't like my— my mother I don't suppose you've ever held anybody in yours. But 95 perhaps—maybe——" With a little smothered cry her hands crept up to her father's shoulders. "Oh, if you just could hold me till breakfast time!" she begged, "or just till the coffee's ready."
Flushing like an embarrassed school-boy her father caught her up in his arms and sank back into the narrow angular corner of plush and wood with the little unfamiliar form snuggled close on his breast.
"Why—why, you don't weigh anything!" he faltered.
"No, I'm not as fat as I was last week," conceded Daphne. Like a puppy dog settling down for a nap she stirred once or twice in her nest. "Do you think of any little song you could sing?" she asked.
"Nothing except:
'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!——'"