"Can't you make it 'Jenny,' Uncle Wes?" asked Genevieve.
He stared at her blankly. "But I didn't adopt him, ma'am--only her."
"He is the brother of your dear daughter, and I am his wife. Come now," she coaxed, "you must admit that brings me near enough to call you 'Uncle Wes.'"
"You've got me, ma'am--Jenny. I give in, I throw up the fight. That irrigation project now--Chuckie's brother can have anything of mine he asks for. Only there's one thing--you've got to make that yearling say 'Granddad' when he talks to me."
"O-oh!" cooed Genevieve. "To think you feel that way towards him! Of course he shall say it. And I--Will you not allow me to make it 'Daddy'?"
He could not resist her enticingly upturned lips. He brushed down his bristly mustache, and bent over awkwardly, to kiss his new daughter.
"Thought you were one of those super-high-toned ladies, m'm--Jenny," he remarked.
The cultured child of millions smiled up at him reproachfully. "What! after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it's true there was a time--before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish and veneer, or the lack of polish and veneer."
Isobel, all her doubts and fears allayed, had risen from the precipice's edge in time to hear Genevieve's reply. She added eagerly: "Nor should men be judged by what they have been if they have become something else--if they have climbed up--up out of the depths!"
"Belle! dear Sister Belle! Then he has proved it to you? Oh, I am so glad for you! He has proved to you that he has climbed--to the heights."
"To the very heights! I must tell Daddy. Give me Thomas. See, he is fast asleep, the poor abused little darling! Go and watch them, and our climbers. They are going down like a string of mountain sheep."
Genevieve placed the baby in his aunt's outstretched arms and went to look into the abyss through the field glasses. Isobel drew her father away, out of earshot of the down-peering group of men. She stopped behind the tent, which Gowan had pitched part way up the slope of the ridge.
"You want to talk with me about Lafe, honey?" surmised Knowles, as the girl started to speak and hesitated.
Her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she raised her shyly lowered eyes and looked up at him with a clear, direct gaze. "Yes, Daddy. He--he loves me, and I--love him."