“And to my husband and myself to be your guests! 239 I have quite fallen in love with your daughter, Mr. Knowles. If you’ll permit me to say it, you are very fortunate to have so lovely and lovable a girl.”
“Don’t I know it, ma’am!”
“So beautiful––and her character as beautiful as her face. How you must prize her!”
“Prize her!” repeated Knowles, his usual stolid face aglow with pride and tenderness. “Why, ma’am, I couldn’t hold her more in liking if she was my own flesh and blood!”
Genevieve suddenly bent down to hide the intense emotion that had struck the color from her face. Yet after a moment’s pause, she spoke in a composed, almost casual tone: “Then Chuckie is not your own daughter?”
“Not in the way you mean. Hasn’t she told you? I adopted her.”
“I see,” remarked Genevieve, with a show of polite interest. “But of course, taking her when a young infant, she has always thought of you as her own father.”
“No––what I can’t get over is that she feels that way, and I feel the same to her, though I never saw or heard of her till she was going on fourteen.”
“Ah!” Genevieve could no longer suppress her agitation. “Then she is––I’m sure that she must be––You said she came from the East, from Chicago?” 240
“No, ma’am! I didn’t say where she came from,” curtly replied the cowman.