"Go and sit in your little chair, Phil. Your intuitions are playing tricks with your judgment."
"Fudge! I know it's true now. The author's name in the book is a nom de plume. I saw that in a literary note somewhere."
Nan had seriously hoped Phil would not learn of the joint authorship; but already it was an accepted fact in the girl's mind. She was smitten with contrition for her blindness in having failed to see earlier what was now plain enough! Nan was in love with her father! Their collaboration upon a book only added plausibility to her surmise. Nothing could be plainer, nothing, indeed, more fitting! Her heart warmed at the thought. Her father stood forth in a new light; she was torn with self-accusations for her stupidity in not having seen it all before. Admitting nothing, Nan parried her thrusts about the "Gray Knight." When Phil caught up the book and began to read a passage that she had found particularly diverting, and which she declared to be altogether "Nanesque," as she put it, Nan snatched the book away and declined to discuss the subject further.
Nan had recovered her spirits, and the two gave free rein to the badinage in which they commonly indulged.
They were sitting down at the table when Kirkwood arrived. He had found it possible to come home for the night and run back to the city in the morning. Now that Phil's suspicions had been aroused as to Nan, she was alert for any manifestation of reciprocal feeling in her father. He was clearly pleased to find Nan in his house; but there was nothing new in this. He would have been as glad to see Rose, Phil was sure. Phil launched daringly upon "The Gray Knight of Picardy," parrying evasion and shattering the wall of dissimulation behind which they sought to entrench themselves. It was just like Nan and her father; no one else would ever have thought up anything so preposterous, so killingly funny. She went for the book and cited chapters and attributed them, one after the other, to the collaborators.
"Oh, you can't tell me! That talk between the knight and the cigar-store Indian is yours, Nan; and the place where he finds the militia drilling and chases the colonel into the creek is yours, daddy! And I'm ashamed of both of you that you never told me! What have I done to be left out of a joke like this! You might have let me squeeze in a little chapter somewhere. I always thought I could write a book if some one would give me a good start."
"We're cornered," said Nan finally. "But we'll have to bribe her."
"I came by the office and found some more letters from magazines that want short stories, serials, anything from the gifted author of 'The Gray Knight of Picardy,'" said Kirkwood. "Why not enlarge the syndicate, Nan, and let Phil in? But I've got to retire; I mustn't even be suspected. This is serious. It would kill my prospects as a lawyer if it got out on me that I dallied at literature. It's no joke that the law is a jealous mistress. And now I have the biggest case I ever had; and likely to be the most profitable. How do we come by these birds, Phil?"
"Fred Holton brought them in, daddy. You remember him; he was at the party."
"Yes; I remember, Phil. He's Samuel's boy, who's gone to live on their old farm."