“Daddy!”
“Yes, Marian?”
“I’m so thankful it has turned out to be you!”
“Yes, my dear?” responded the happy father, in a tone of enquiry.
“I mean I’m glad it’s you who are my father. It might have been somebody quite different, you know.”
“Yes,” he answered again, with a beaming face.
“I’m glad, you know, daddy, just because you’re exactly the kind of father I want—that’s all.”
“And I also am glad that it is you, little one,” he responded. “And how thankful we ought to be that we learnt to love one another before getting to know who we were!”
“Yes,” she said, “it would have been queer, and——not at all nice, if we had first been introduced to each other as father and daughter, and told it was our duty to love one another without delay. And then there’s another thing. Though, at first, it seemed cruel to you, daddy, that your little girl should have been lost for so many years, when I think how much more—very likely—we shall love one another, than we ever should have done if I had not been lost, and how much happier we shall be together, it seems quite kind of God to have allowed us to be separated for a little while—especially as He found such good friends to take care of me in the meantime.”
“Cobbler” Horn gently stroked the dark head, which still nestled against his breast.