'Sh! I have touched her up.

MARGARET. Dad, Dad--what a funny man!

(She has seen MR. COADE with whistle, enlivening the wood. He
pirouettes round them and departs to add to the happiness of others.
MARGARET gives an excellent imitation of him at which her father
shakes his head, then reprehensibly joins in the dance. Her mood
changes, she clings to him.)

MARGARET. Hold me tight, Daddy, I 'm frightened. I think they want to
take you away from me.

DEARTH. Who, gosling?

MARGARET. I don't know. It's too lovely, Daddy; I won't be able to
keep hold of it.

DEARTH. What is?

MARGARET. The world--everything--and you, Daddy, most of all. Things
that are too beautiful can't last.

DEARTH (who knows it). Now, how did you find that out?

MARGARET (still in his arms). I don't know, Daddy, am I sometimes
stranger than other people's daughters?

DEARTH. More of a madcap, perhaps.

MARGARET (solemnly). Do you think I am sometimes too full of
gladness?

DEARTH. My sweetheart, you do sometimes run over with it. (He is at
his easel again.)

MARGARET (persisting). To be very gay, dearest dear, is so near to
being very sad.

DEARTH (who knows it). How did you find that out, child?

MARGARET. I don't know. From something in me that's afraid.
(Unexpectedly.) Daddy, what is a 'might-have-been?'

DEARTH. A might-have-been? They are ghosts, Margaret. I daresay I
'might have been' a great swell of a painter, instead of just this
uncommonly happy nobody. Or again, I might have been a worthless idle
waster of a fellow.

MARGARET (laughing). You!

DEARTH. Who knows? Some little kink in me might have set me off on the
wrong road. And that poor soul I might so easily have been might have
had no Margaret. My word, I'm sorry for him.

MARGARET. So am I. (She conceives a funny picture.) The poor old
Daddy, wandering about the world without me!

DEARTH. And there are other 'might-have-beens'--lovely ones, but
intangible. Shades, Margaret, made of sad folk's thoughts.

MARGARET (jigging about). I am so glad I am not a shade. How awful it
would be, Daddy, to wake up and find one wasn't alive.

DEARTH. It would, dear.

MARGARET. Daddy, wouldn't it be awful. I think men need daughters.

DEARTH. They do.

MARGARET. Especially artists.

DEARTH. Yes, especially artists.

MARGARET. Especially artists.

DEARTH. Especially artists.

MARGARET (covering herself with leaves and kicking them off). Fame is
not everything.