“It's not often you can believe what you don't know,” she answered. “I don't know anything about it. There's just one thing I believe, because I know it. I believe what grandmother does. Read that.”
She handed him the final sheet of old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter. It was written with very black ink and in an astonishingly bold and clear hand. It was easy to read the sentences with which she ended.
There's a lot said. There's always more saying than doing. But it's right-down funny to see how the lad has made hard and fast friends just going about in his queer way, and no one knowing how he did it. I like him myself. He's one of those you needn't ask questions about. If there's anything said that isn't to his credit, it's not true. There's no ifs, buts, or ands about that, Ann.
Little Ann herself read the words as her father read them.
“That's the thing I believe, because I know it,” was all she said.
“It's the thing I'd swear to mysel',” her father answered bluffly. “But, by Judd—”
She gave him a little push and spoke to him in homely Lancashire phrasing, and with some soft unsteadiness of voice.
“Sit thee down, Father love,” she said, “and let me sit on thy knee.”
He sat down with emotional readiness, and she sat on his stout knee like a child. It was a thing she did in tender or troubled moments as much in these days as she had done when she was six or seven. Her little lightness and soft young ways made it the most natural thing in the world, as well as the prettiest. She had always sat on his knee in the hours when he had been most discouraged over the invention. She had known it made him feel as though he were taking care of her, and as though she depended utterly on him to steady the foundations of her world. What could such a little bit of a lass do without “a father”?
“It's upset thee, lass,” he said. “It's upset thee.”