“Are you sure there is anything the matter, Major?” Dorothy responded.
“Can’t fool me. They’re at outs. And you, Captain? Is that what makes you so grave, my dear?”
“No, Daddy,” she said, putting down her work and looking into his rugged face this time of her own volition.
“Something personal, my dear?”
“Very personal, Daddy,” calling him by the intimate name the children used. “I—I think I—I am in love.”
He neither made a joke of it nor appeared astonished. He just eyed her quietly and nodded. The flush mounted into her face and she glowed like a red rose. After all, it is not the easiest thing in the world to turn the heart out for others to look at, even the dearest of others.
“I think I am in love. And the young man is poor—and—and I am afraid our money is going to stand between him and me.”
“My dear Dorothy,” said the major, “are you really in love with somebody, or in love with love?”
“I know what you mean,” his daughter said, with a tremulous little laugh and shaking her head. “Seeing so many about us falling into the toils of Dan Cupid, you think I perhaps imagine I have fixed my affections upon some particular object. Is that it, Major?”
He nodded, a quizzical little smile on his lips.