"One day in the street I hear a man say my father's name. 'That is he,' he said, and I look and I see my father. He is riding in a fine motor-car with his white wife and his white children. My heart beat fast to see him. He is a handsome, proud man, not very old yet. He was just a boy when he was in our country; my mot'er tell me so. A boy with yellow hair who laugh all the time and play jokes, she say. Still he likes to laugh I see by the lines in his face.
"After I see him in his fine motor-car I am more scare. What does he want with a poor girl like me, I think, and I do nothing to see him. But all the time I read the newspapers to find out what he does. Then I see there is going to be a big, what you call, political meeting, and my father is going to speak. So I go to the skating-rink on that night, and all the people look at me because there is no other red girl go to that political meeting. But I not care. I am crazy to hear my father's voice. When he stand up to speak my heart knock in my breast like the stick-kettle when the people dance.
"He speaks. It is beautiful. I do not understand it all, but I am happy because my father is a good, kind man who wishes good to all the poor people. Always he is working for the people, he says. His voice was as sweet and strong as an organ in church. When I hear him speak I know for sure he is my father, because I feel the same inside as him, but I cannot speak it.
"After that I think much I go to see him. I am afraid and I am not afraid. I think why should I be afraid, he is kind, he feels for poor people. I think maybe I go as a poor girl, and not tell him I am his daughter. At last I go.
"When I see his house I am scare again. It is as big as a hill. It has a hundred windows. Long time I walk outside the yard. 'You are a fool,' I say to me. 'You have done nothing against him; he will not be angry.' At last I go to the door. A man comes. He say my father is out and close the door to me. As I am going down the steps my father comes in his motor-car. He asks me what I want. I say I want to see him. He laugh and take me inside with him, into a room. It is like a dream. My legs are shaking.
"It is a beautiful room with high windows. All around the walls there are books with different coloured covers. There is a big desk, and he sit behind it, and lean back and pull off his gloves. He smile. He has beautiful white teeth, like my mot'er tell me, and he ask me again what I want. I am so scare I say the first thing I think. I ask him for a job.
"He is very kind. He say: 'Certainly we will find you work. What can you do?'
"I say I am a good laundress, or a cook, or a nurse. We talk some more. He is still kind. He ask me how long I been in Winnipeg, and where I work and all. Always I am too scare to say in that fine room: 'I am your daughter.'
"At last he say: 'Well, come back to-morrow, and I'll see what I can do.' Then I start to go, and he say: 'Wait a minute.' He get up and come around the desk, his eyes go bad——"
She paused. Ralph's heart beat thickly with a horrible premonition.