downstairs, smiling and chuckling at her radiant happiness, did she
give way to those emotions she had been fighting this long time; then
her face grew white and tragic. "Oh, daddy, daddy!" she whispered.
"What _have_ I done to you?"

Tom Parker had raised his girl like a son, and like a son she took
hold of things, but with a daughter's tact. Her intuition told her
much, but she did not arrive at a full appreciation of the family
affairs until she had the house running and went down to put his
office in order. Then, indeed, she learned at what cost had come
those four expensive years in the East, and the truth left her
limp. She went through Tom's dusty, disordered papers, ostensibly
rearranging and filing them, and they told her much; what they did
not tell her she learned from Judge Halloran and other old cronies
who came in to pay their garrulous compliments.

Tom was mortgaged to the hilt, his royalties were pledged; a crow
could not pick a living out of his insurance business.

Such a condition was enough to dismay any girl who had never
seriously considered money matters and who had returned home to
take up a life of comparative ease and superlative enjoyment where
she had left it off, but "Bob" said nothing to her father. She
knew every one of his shortcomings, and they endeared him to her,
quite as a son's faults and failures deepen a mother's love, but
she knew, too, that he was cantankerous and required careful
handling. Tom's toes were tender, and he forever exposed them
where they were easily trodden upon, therefore the girl stepped
cautiously and never even referred to his sacrifices, which would
have cruelly embarrassed both of them.