"A home of our own, Ann. Pretty sweet, isn't it?"
"Oh, daddy, it is!"
"You mustn't overdo, though, baby. Sometimes we're not so strong as we think we are. A little hired girl would be best." The fish business had more than held its own.
"But I love doing it alone, dad. It—it's the next best thing to a home of—my own."
He looked startled into her dreaming eyes.
"Your own? Why, Annie, isn't this—your own?"
She laid fingers against his eyes so that he could not see the pinkiness of her.
"You know what I mean, daddy—my—very—own."
At that timid phrasing of hers Henry felt that his heart was actually strangling, as if some one were holding it back on its systolic swing, like a caught pendulum.
"Why, Annie," he said, "I never thought—"