“Well, there are flowers that I shouldn’t care to have her pluck.”

“Don’t you know her well enough to understand that she’ll pluck only the little lovely blooms?”

His eyes rested on Jean’s absorbed face.  “Yes, thank God.  And thank you, too, for saying it, Emily.”

After dinner they sat in the library.  Doctor McKenzie on one side of the fire with his cigar, Emily on the other side with her knitting.  Jean between them in a low chair, a knot of Derry’s violets fragrant against the gray of her gown, her fingers idle.

“Why aren’t you knitting?” the Doctor asked.

“I don’t have to set a good example to Emily.”

“And you do to Hilda?” He threw back his head and laughed.

“You needn’t laugh.  Isn’t it comfy with Emily?”

“It is.”  He glanced at the slender black figure.  He was still feeling the fineness of the thing she had said about Jean.  “But when she is here I am jealous.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

“And I am never jealous of Hilda.  If you had Emily all the time you’d love her better than you do me.”

He chuckled at their hot eyes.  “If you are teasing,” Jean told him, “I’ll forgive you.  But Emily won’t, will you, Emily?”

“No.”  Emily’s voice was gay, and he liked the color in her cheeks.  “He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.  Some day he is going to be devoured by a green-eyed monster, like a bad little boy in a Sunday School story.”

Her needles clicked, and her eyes sparkled.  There was no doubt that there was a sprightliness about Emily that was stimulating.

“But one’s only daughter, Emily.  Isn’t jealousy pardonable?”

“Not in you.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” with obvious reluctance, “you’re too big for it.”

“Oh,” he was more pleased than he was willing to admit, “did you hear that, Jean?”

But Jean, having drifted away from them, came back with, “I am going to church with him tomorrow.”

“Him?  Whom?”

“Derry Drake, Daddy, and may I bring him home to dinner?”

“Do you think a man like that goes begging for invitations?  He has probably been asked to a dozen places to eat his turkey.”

“He can’t eat it at a dozen places, Daddy.  And anyhow I should like to ask him.  I—­I think he is lonely—­”

“A man with millions is never lonely.”

She did not attempt to argue.  She felt that her father could not possibly grasp the truth about Derry Drake.  Her own understanding of his need had been a blinding, whirling revelation.  He had said, “I wanted some one—­who cared—.”  Not for a moment since then had the world been real to her.  She had seemed in the center of a golden-lighted sphere, where Derry’s voice spoke to her, where Derry’s smile warmed her, where Derry, a silver-crested knight, knelt at her feet.

Julia came in to say that Miss Jean was wanted at the telephone.