But with a vigorous shake of her shoulders she threw it off. Her eyes
darkened.

"I reckon you ain't thinking, Pop--" she began.

"I was only sayin' it was curous," he rejoined quietly. Nevertheless,
after a pause, he rose, coughed, and going up to the young girl, as she
leaned over the dresser, bent his powerful arm around her, and, drawing
her and the plate she was holding against his breast, laid his bearded
cheek for an instant softly upon her rebellious head. "It's all right,
Minty," he said; "ain't it, pet?" Minty's eyelids closed gently under
the familiar pressure. "Wot's that in your hair, Minty?" he said
tactfully, breaking an embarrassing pause.

"Bar's grease, father," murmured Minty, in a child's voice--the grown-up
woman, under that magic touch, having lapsed again into her father's
motherless charge of ten years before.

"It's pow'ful soothin', and pretty," said her father.

"I made it myself--do you want some?" asked Minty.

"Not now, girl!" For a moment they slightly rocked each other in that
attitude--the man dexterously, the woman with infinite tenderness--and
then they separated.

Late that night, after Richelieu had returned, and her father wrestled
in his fitful sleep with the remorse of his guilty indulgence at supper,
Minty remained alone in her room, hard at work, surrounded by the
contents of one of her mother's trunks and the fragments of certain