“Do ye?” returned Joe, setting aside the pipe which he had been about to fill, and drawing her towards him. “Ye’d never like to live wi’ an owd mon same as me,” he pursued in a hesitating tone. “Nay, of course, ye wouldn’t; ye’d be awful dull.”
Jinny shook her head till her curls made a yellow nimbus. “I wouldn’t!” she cried with emphasis. “I’d love to live here wi’ you, Mr Makin. You’d be my daddy then, wouldn’t ye? Were you ever a daddy, Mr Makin?”
“A long time ago,” said Joe, “I had a little lass o’ my own, and she’d curly hair mich the same as thine and bonny blue e’en. Her little bed is up yon in the top chamber.”
“If I was your little lass I could sleep in her little bed, couldn’t I?” returned Jinny, who was a practical young person. “Daddy’s got a lot of new childer—and I could like to have a new daddy. I’d like you for my daddy, Mr Makin,” she insisted.
“Well,” returned Joe, uplifting her dimpled chin with his rugged forefinger, “’tis a notion that; I reckon I could do wi’ thee very well.”
“I’d sleep—in—that—little—bed—up—yon,” resumed Jinny, in a sort of chant, “and I’d sit in this here chair.”
With some difficulty she dragged over the missus’s chair to the opposite side of the hearth, and climbed into it. There she sat with her curly head leaning against the back, a little hand on each of its wooden arms, and her chubby legs dangling. It was the missus’s chair, but Joe did not chide the presumptuous little occupant. On the contrary, he gave a sort of one-sided nod at her, and winked with both eyes together.
“Now you are as grand as the Queen,” said he.
While they were chuckling together over this sally, there came a sound of hasty steps without, followed by a knock on the door; and John Frith thrust in his head.
“Eh, thou’rt theer!” he cried. “My word, Jinny, what a fright thou’s gi’en me. I thought thou was lost.”