It was to be very simple and easy for the Forces; like their kind, they left the hard part of the bargain to Mr. Bingle. He was to tell Kathleen of the great change that was soon to take place in her life. He was to tell the happy, loving little girl that she was no longer to call him daddy, that she was to go and live with the man she feared and disliked. That was the part of the bargain left to the one who loved her best of all and who would not have given her an instant's pain for all the world. He was to deliver her, with scant excuse or explanation, into the hands of strangers--cold, unfeeling strangers. It would be the same as saying to the child that he did not care for her any longer, that he did not love her, that he was willing to give her up to Mr. Force without so much as a pang of regret. For he could NOT tell her the truth. She was never to know about the carbolic acid and the days of starvation. She was only to know that Mr. Force was to be her daddy from this time forward and that Mr. Bingle could never be anything more to her than Uncle Tom. But after he told her, he cried.... Still, they were not to take her away until the end of the week, and that was five days off. An unsuspected astuteness in the character of Thomas Singleton Bingle reveals itself in the declaration, now to be made for the first time in this present history of the man: he never allowed his wards to look upon themselves as his own children. They were taught to call him daddy and to look upon him as a substitute supplied by God to take the place of a real father, and by the same token Mrs. Bingle became mother to the brood, but they were safe-guarded against the surprise and shock of future revelations--revelations that so frequently spoil the lives of those who have lived in happy ignorance. Mr. Bingle, gentle soul that he was, had the heart to look ahead in this pleasant game of his. He saw the cruelty of a too loving deception. He foresaw the desolating results of a too great faith in chance. So his children were taught to regard him in the light of a protector who was satisfied to have them feel that he was under obligations to them instead of the other way round. It was his joy to be called daddy, and in return for this simple tribute he lavished upon them all the love and tenderness of a true father and a great deal of the consideration that a child deserves, but seldom gets, from its own pre-occupied and self-satisfied parent.