ing about me!"

She clasped Nan by the wrists and laughed into her eyes.

"Go and sit in your little chair, Phil. Your intuitions are playing
tricks with your judgment."

"Fudge! I know it's true now. The author's name in the book is a _nom de
plume_. I saw that in a literary note somewhere."

Nan had seriously hoped Phil would not learn of the joint authorship;
but already it was an accepted fact in the girl's mind. She was smitten
with contrition for her blindness in having failed to see earlier what
was now plain enough! Nan was in love with her father! Their
collaboration upon a book only added plausibility to her surmise.
Nothing could be plainer, nothing, indeed, more fitting! Her heart
warmed at the thought. Her father stood forth in a new light; she was
torn with self-accusations for her stupidity in not having seen it all
before. Admitting nothing, Nan parried her thrusts about the "Gray
Knight." When Phil caught up the book and began to read a passage that
she had found particularly diverting, and which she declared to be
altogether "Nanesque," as she put it, Nan snatched the book away and
declined to discuss the subject further.

Nan had recovered her spirits, and the two gave free rein to the
badinage in which they commonly indulged.

They were sitting down at the table when Kirkwood arrived. He had found
it possible to come home for the night and run back to the city in the
morning. Now that Phil's suspicions had been aroused as to Nan, she was
alert for any manifestation of reciprocal feeling in her father. He was
clearly pleased to find Nan in his house; but there was nothing new in
this. He would have been as glad to see Rose, Phil was sure. Phil
launched daringly upon "The Gray Knight of Picardy," parrying evasion
and shattering the wall of dissimulation behind which they sought to
entrench themselves. It was just like Nan and her father; no one else
would ever have thought up anything so preposterous, so killingly
funny. She went for the book and cited chapters and attributed them, one
after the other, to the collaborators.

"Oh, you can't tell me! That talk between the knight and the cigar-store
Indian is yours, Nan; and the place where he finds the militia drilling
and chases the colonel into the creek is yours, daddy! And I'm ashamed
of both of you that you never told me! What have I done to be left out
of a joke like this! You might have let me squeeze in a little chapter
somewhere. I alway