Then at last a little one had come to them, and with her coming the mother had died.
At first he had scarce wished for the sight of the child who had cost him his wife; but as that feeling slowly faded, it gave place to just as ardent a worship of the babe who was wife and daughter in one to him, and he adored her blindly as he had adored the mother, and lived for nothing else.
She stirred now, and he sprang to her side.
One dimpled brown arm was flung over the white coverlet and the other fat hand pushed the golden-brown curls off the forehead. Then those blue eyes—blue as speedwells in the spring hedges—opened wide, and when they lighted on him the red mouth smiled.
“’Ot,” echoed he, alarmed, feeling her brow as the most careful mother would have done. “May be ye’ve too many bed-clothes on. Ye see, ye was cold when we put ye to bed.”
“Yes,” said she, “I know, ’cos I tummled into the river. It _was_ cold. ’Oo pulled me out, Dad?”
“Why, I did, o’ course,” replied the man jealously. “’Oo else should? But little girls mustn’t run away from their Daddies so far another time and get playin’ by nasty rivers.”
“Tain’t a nasty river,” said the child, “I like it. But I won’t go tummling in no more, Dad. ’Cos it frights ye, don’t it?”
“And I might ha’ been drownded dead, I might,” added Daisy with impressiveness, though of course without any understanding of the words which she repeated merely as she had heard them from his lips when enjoining caution upon her. “And then what would my poor old Dad ha’ done, wivout ’is little maid?”
“Whativer would he?” repeated Wycombe with a shudder, realizing the terror in quite a different manner! And he sighed so deeply and looked so scared that she was frightened too.
“But I bain’t goin’ away now, be I, Dad?” asked she, sitting up in bed, uneasiness in the blue eyes.
Then he smiled, and folding her in his rough arms kissed her passionately.
“No, darlin’, please God ye won’t never go away from your old Dad—not so long as ’e be above ground,” added he, beneath his breath.
She flung her little arms round his neck and hugged him, and after a few minutes, still softly kissing her, he said: “And now Daisy must kneel up like a good girl and say ’er prayers ’cos she was too cold to say ’em when she went to bed, and she’s got to thank God for sparin’ of ’er to ’er old Dad.”