Re-dramatized in that single instant to the role of a poet she straightened up very formally. Back to her breast crept the quivering little hands. Her eyes were blurred with tears. "The name of this poem," she said, "is 'The Word that God Forgot to Make.' But if that's too long I could, of course, call it just 'The Miracle.' See what you think. 'Out of panic and pain, out of unspeakable disaster, (Oh rhyme, oh rune, oh rhythm itself, come faster, come faster!) Out of all this I say Fate has found me my father! But where? Where? In earth or air? From sky to sea? From you to me? Where shall I find a rhyme for "father"? I whose only speech is rhyme, I who have so little time. How can I in other ways sound my Daddy's glorious praise? Beauty, Splendor, Brains, Perfection----'" [100] "Oh, I say!" wriggled her father. "Is that all?" Wilting down on his breast again he heard her swallow pretty hard several times before her muffled answer came. "It's--it's all," she said, "except, of course, the refrain 'Yo-ho,' etc." Chuckling softly to himself for a moment her father sat staring off across the crown of her head at the shifting car-window landscape of orange groves, palm trees, and pine. "Couldn't you pat me a little?" came the sweet, muffled voice again. "I darsn't," said her father. "If I should unclasp a single hand you'd go bumpety-bump on the floor." "O--h," sighed Daphne, "but couldn't you even--pat me with your voice?" "'Pat you with my voice?'" puzzled her father. With a quiver of muscles his strong arms tightened round her. "Why, you poor baby," he cried, "you poor lonesome little kiddie! You----" "Why does everybody think I'm so little?" protested Daphne. With considerable effort she struggled up again, "You--and John [101] Burnarde--and the--and the Kissing Man! Every one of you called me 'a baby.' But that Wiltoner boy--at the dance that night," she faltered, "he treated me as though I was quite grown up and real. Right in the midst of a dance it was he asked me about bread machines. Asked my advice about bread machines, I mean! And I loved it!" "Did you ever see a bread machine?" quizzed her father. "N--o," admitted Daphne, "but it sounds so real! But what I want to know," she hurried on quite irrelevantly, "is about this place--this wild, desert-islandy sort of place that we're going to. Will that seem _real_?" "Very real," promised her father. "Tents?" questioned Daphne. "Yes," said her father. "What will there be to eat?" brightened Daphne. "Oh, canned goods," shrugged her father, "and warm oranges and grape-fruit, and heaps of salt pork, of course, and all the fresh fish we have strength to land--Spanish mackerel, sea trout, sharks." "Not sharks?" thrilled Daphne. [102] "Ah, of course, we don't have to eat them," confessed her father. "And people?" wilted Daphne again. "Will there have to be people?"