"I don't know, Dads, and it isn't the number; it's the awful habit they've got into—and I don't understand anything and I don't encourage them, do I? Do lend me a hankie—this chocolate has burst—and what am I to do?"
"Turn a deaf ear, or a cold shoulder, or put a brave face on, until———" said Dads, retrieving his handkerchief.
"Until what?"
"Until the right man comes along, darling, as he surely will."
The girl's lids suddenly dropped until the lashes lay like a fringe upon the white cheek over which very slowly but very surely crept the faintest of rose-colours.
"Hum!" said Dads to himself, as he made great use of the hankie.
"Do smoke, dearest!"
"No, thank you, pet; I couldn't here."
The man who worshipped his wife and adored his little daughter looked round the white and somewhat austere room, and ran his eye over the bookstand at his elbow.
Books on horses, a treatise on bulldogs, the New Testament, essays in French and in German, the History of Egypt in Arabic, Budge's "Book of the Dead," and "King Solomon's Mines."