"I will," he tried to say, but his voice would scarcely come.
Anna being gone, he sat for some moments looking at Elin while she tripped from dresser to table, and in and out of the pantry, spreading the cloth, and laying the plates and the food. The girl was so simple, so natural, so free from self-consciousness, that she seemed to be hardly aware of his presence, for she hummed to herself softly as if some song-bird in her breast could not be kept quite still. His heart swelled and throbbed as his eyes followed her about, and when she left the room the light seemed to fail in it, and when she came back the air seemed to become warm. In the dizzy happiness of that hour he felt as if he had lost a daughter in every one of the fifteen years he had lived without her, and now that she was near, so close, his hands burned and itched to hold her. He wanted to take her in his arms and say, "My child! My child! Doesn't something tell you who I am? I am your father, and I have wanted you so much and thought of you so often, and now I have come to fetch you and we shall never be parted again!" But between fear of frightening her and dread of disclosing himself, all he could do was to conquer the fluttering in his throat and say:
"Your name is Elin, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir," said the girl.
"What a beautiful name it is, too--Eleen! Your father chose it, didn't he?"
"I have never heard that, sir. Did grandmother say so?"
"Grandmother and I," he stammered, "have been talking of your father. You don't remember him?"
"Oh no, sir--he died when I was quite little."
"What a loss that must have been to you, my child!"
"I can't say that, sir," said the girl, "because, you see, Uncle Magnus has been the same as a father to me all my life, and I have never known any difference."