You would want for nothing." Gertrude raised her eyes wonderingly to her father's face.

She had laid the sleeping child in its cot, and had taken a place at her father's feet.
"What mean you, father ?" she asked.

"I have only you in the wide world now.

If you were to die, I should be both orphaned and destitute.

What mean you by speaking of my future thus?
Whom have I in the wide world besides yourself ?" The father passed his hand over her curly hair, and answered with a sigh and a smile: "Surely, child, thou dost know by this time that the heart of Reuben Harmer is all thine own.