"I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow tassels I named Princess Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess Fadeaway."
At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back from the sunset into her face.
"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little—how very little you know of me? By you I mean all of you, especially your brother and Mrs. Brooke."
Her glowing face questioned him for a moment.
"But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after all?"
"I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her words unanswered.
Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite evasion.
"We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said.
"What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to you—it doesn't really concern you, of course—that's what I felt—but," he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since I saw her."
"Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a ripe tomato.