way I never did before in all my life. If anything awful is true, then
he is more mine than ever. But it can't be! And when I looked for him
I found him--in a way I never had before. He was standing at my
mother's door and the great big man was crying just like a girl, with
his shoulders shaking and big sobs coming.

"Bess, Bess," he sobbed Mother's name under his breath, "she's going
to be a grown woman and I don't know what to do without you. Ten long
years. Oh, Bess!"

Yes, I suppose I'm nearer a grown woman than most girls of my age, and
I'm tall enough to take a big man in my arms, which are so long and
thin as to be a joke, and hold him close enough to make the sobs stop
coming.

"Now, Phil, I leave it to you if you are not enough to upset any man,
with your moonlight picnics and folderols," Father said, in just a few
seconds from the time I hugged him up. He was both laughing and
sniffling into his handkerchief at the same time, and I had a lovely
Lovelace Peyton feeling about him, because he looked so young and
ashamed of himself for being caught crying.

"I'm just as much your son as I ever was, Father," I said with a gulp
and a lump in my own throat. "I'm never going to be a daughter, if you
don't want one."

"I do, Phyllis, I do; but I want the son-girl sometimes, too. You go
to bed." And with a sound hug that nearly broke my ribs, as neither he
nor I were used to them, he went into his room and shut his door
decidedly.