"You needn't, and you and Chuckie can come and go just the same as ever. I don't want your visit spoiled. It's a great treat to all of us to have you with us." "And to my husband and myself to be your guests! I have quite fallen in love with your daughter, Mr. Knowles. If you'll permit me to say it, you are very fortunate to have so lovely and lovable a girl." "Don't I know it, ma'am!" "So beautiful--and her character as beautiful as her face. How you must prize her!" "Prize her!" repeated Knowles, his usual stolid face aglow with pride and tenderness. "Why, ma'am, I couldn't hold her more in liking if she was my own flesh and blood!" Genevieve suddenly bent down to hide the intense emotion that had struck the color from her face. Yet after a moment's pause, she spoke in a composed, almost casual tone: "Then Chuckie is not your own daughter?" "Not in the way you mean. Hasn't she told you? I adopted her." "I see," remarked Genevieve, with a show of polite interest. "But of course, taking her when a young infant, she has always thought of you as her own father." "No--what I can't get over is that she feels that way, and I feel the same to her, though I never saw or heard of her till she was going on fourteen." "Ah!" Genevieve could no longer suppress her agitation. "Then she is--I'm sure that she must be--You said she came from the East, from Chicago?" "No, ma'am! I didn't say where she came from," curtly replied the cowman. The shock of his brusqueness restored the lady to her usual quiet composure. Looking up into his face, she found it as blank and impenetrable as a cement wall. "You must pardon me," she murmured. "I myself am a Chicago girl, so you must see how natural it is for me to hope that so sweet and beautiful a girl as Chuckie came from my city." "Chuckie is my daughter," stated Knowles in a flat tone. "If you will kindly permit me to explain. My husband--" "Chuckie is my daughter, legally adopted," repeated the cowman. "You can see what she is like. If that is not enough, ma'am, I can't prevent you from declining our hospitality, though we'd be mighty sorry to have you and your husband leave." The tears started into Genevieve's hazel eyes. "Mr. Knowles! how could you think for a moment that I--that we--" "Excuse me, ma'am!" he hastened to apologize. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You see, I'm kind of prejudiced along some lines. I've been bred up to the Western idea that it isn't just etiquette to ask about people's antecedents. Real Western, I mean. Our city folks are nearly as bad as you Easterners over family trees. As if a child isn't as much descended from its mother's maternal grandmother as from its father's paternal grandfather!" Genevieve smiled at this adroit diversion of the subject by the seemingly simple Westerner, and replied: "My father's and mother's parents were farm people. My husband worked his way up out of the Chicago slums."