Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/245

Rh one of the palms, he had her on his knee, stroking her hair, playfully holding her off while he showed his shining fangs and let her, with a vague, affectionate, helpless, pointless "Dear old girl, dear little daughter!" inhale the fragrance of his cherished beard. She must have been sorry for him, she afterwards knew; so well could she privately follow his difficulty in being specific to her about anything. She had such possibilities of vibration, of response, that it needed nothing more than this to make up to her in fact for omissions. The tears came into her eyes again as they had come when, in the Park that day, the Captain told her so excitingly that her mother was good. What was this but exciting too, this still directer goodness of her father and this unexampled shining solitude with him, out of which everything had dropped but that he was papa and that he was magnificent? It didn't spoil it that she finally felt he must have, as he became restless, some purpose he did n't quite see his way to bring out; for in the freshness of their recovered fellowship she would have lent herself gleefully to his suggesting, or even to his pretending, that their relations were easy and graceful. There was