"I don't think I can, daddy. It's mother's, mother's own. You're my daddy, and there's nothing as good as that to me."
He smiled lovingly down on her, tossing aside his depression.
"And a daddy couldn't have anything better—no, not if he searched this whole wide Canada through from terminal to terminal. I'm just about the luckiest dog this side Heaven.
'Just one girl,
There is just one girl;
There may be others, I know,
But they're not my pearl.
Sun or rain,
She is just the same;
I'll be happy forever with
Just one girl.'"
The song was coarse and toneless, but he knew no other way of voicing it, and she noted nothing of its crudeness.
"Daddy, you're a base deceiver."
She was wagging an accusing finger before his eyes, and he blinked in exaggerated concern.
"O' course," he admitted, "I don't say I've had much chance with more than one. This job of mine is death to gallivanting. I wouldn't know how to look at a woman now—not in a way that would mean she was more to me than one of the same sex as the best little girl in the world."
But the silently accusing finger continued to wag.
"Honest, I don't know what you mean."