"In co'se I do. He's my Pappy."
The others could not speak for a moment. Her unexpected loyalty to the father who had been "real kind" to her got them by the throat.
"What do you want me to do with him?" Mrs. Kildare asked at last.
"Jes' make him go away. Tell him he dassent come back no more. I reckon he thinks you'll take keer of him 'cause you're takin' keer of me. Ef he knows you ain't a-goin' to, he'll go away."
"Very well," said the other, gently, "he shall go away. And, Mag—" she reached back to grip the girl's hand strongly with hers—"he shall never have your baby. She shall grow up as nearly a 'lady' as I can make her. You have my word for that."
CHAPTER XVI
Kate, at this juncture, was filling her days to the brim with work, turning to it as to a tried friend, tested in many a crisis. Her recipe for avoiding thought was extreme physical fatigue; a good recipe, but one which was telling upon her physically. Philip's were not the only eyes which noticed the beginning of a change in Mrs. Kildare; a certain lack of buoyancy, an effect of effort in what she accomplished. Jemima, secretly alarmed, had insisted upon having in a doctor after her mother's fainting attack, but he made little of it. He was a bluff, cheerful, young countryman, shrewd but without subtlety, the son and the worthy successor of Jacques Benoix' successful rival, "Doc" Jones.
"She's as sound as a dollar," he pronounced admiringly. "Don't often see such a specimen of perfect health as the Madam. Nerves? Not likely. Probably over-fatigue—she does the work of ten men. Let me see, how old is she? Nearly forty—humph! Looks twenty-five. Make her take a rest. She'll be all right."
But rest, inactivity, was the one thing Kate would not allow herself. She dared not. She threw herself heart and soul into the business of her estate, and tried to feel the same interest, the same sense of large accomplishment, that had buoyed her up through so many years of loneliness.