"She's pretty cute, you know. About on to everything that's going. Can take the best kind of care of herself. Has had to, poor kid. Her mother died, and you know, Cress, she might just as well have had a grasshopper for a father as me. Although I've tried, she'd tell you herself, I've tried, that is, as far as the limitations of my artistic temperament would permit. But when I feel the _wanderlust_ and the _weltschmerz_ and all that in my blood and hear the siren voices of new properties calling, why, the fireside fetters have got to fall, the white, clinging arms have got to unloosen their grip. That's all there is to it. You know in books how the father of a motherless daughter is always father and mother and brothers and sisters and grandmother, uncles and aunts to her? Well, I haven't been all those to Fuschia. I wouldn't have known how and she wouldn't have stood for it. She's got no particular use for fireside fetters, herself. Oh," optimistically, "I guess she'll be all right here. I'm leaving her all the money she can spend. But I just want you to keep an eye on her. Kind of see that the wheels are running all right and that she's amused and don't mope. You'll like her, you know. It's a funny thing, but everybody's just crazy and always has been about that kid."
Hepworth was not proof against the appeal in his old friend's eyes, neither was he capable of shattering Fleming's simple faith that he, Hepworth, a jaded and middle-aged person, would find Fleming's daughter a delightful and interesting charge.
Fleming's mind still ran on his child. "She's about the only thing in petticoats that has any real confidence in me," he said, with pride. "It's only been once or twice in my career that I've seen a look of real friendship in a woman's eyes. The first sight of me brings that wary, on-guard gleam way back in their blue or brown windows of the soul. You can't fool a woman. They've got those intuitions, you know, and they know instinctively that I'm a born missionary to the henpecked, that it's my mission in life to bring a little cheer into the lives of those poor shut-ins, the married men; scatter a little sunshine on their path.
"By the way," as if struck by a sudden thought, "you've married since I last saw you. Some slip of a girl, I'll be bound. That's what the middle-aged millionaire's sure to do. Well, hold on to your money, Cress. Don't trust to your own fascinations. And you keep an eye on my little Fuschia, won't you?"