She sighed as her eyes roved the length of the man once more. The ashes in the grate were no grayer than his face.
"You're awful thin and white," she observed.
"I'm sick," replied Singleton in excuse.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" answered Virginia.
"You're quite grown up now," remarked the man presently, with a meditative air.
"Oh, yes, sir!" she agreed. "I'm a woman now. I'm fifteen years old."
"I see! Well, well, you are quite grown up! I heard you playing just now. Where did you ever learn such music?"
Jinnie placed her hand on her heart. "I got it out of here, sir," she replied simply.
Involuntarily Singleton straightened his rounded shoulders, and a smile touched the corners of his mouth. Even his own desperate condition for the moment was erased from his mind in the pride he felt in his daughter. Then over him swept a great regret. He had missed more than he had gained in his travels abroad, in not living with and for the little creature before him.
Her eyes were filled with contemplation; then the lovely face, in its exquisite purity, saddened for a moment.
"Matty isn't going to take me across her knee never any more," she vouchsafed, a smile breaking like a ray of sunshine.
The blouse slipped away from her slender throat, and she made a picture, vivid and beautiful. The fatherhood within Thomas Singleton bounded in appreciation as he contemplated his daughter for a short space, measuring accurately the worth within her. He caught the wonderful appeal in the violet eyes, and wished to live. God, how he wanted to live! He would! He would! It meant gathering his supremest strength, to be put forth in efforts of mere existing. Something out of an unknown somewhere, brought to him through the stormy, wonderful music he had heard, made the longing to live so vehement that it hurt. Then the horror of Virginia's words drifted through his tortured brain.
"What?" he ejaculated.
"Now I'm fifteen," explained the girl, "I get a woman's beating with a strap, you see. A while ago I got one that near killed me, but I never cried a tear. Matty was almost scared to death; she thought I was dead. Matty can lick hard, Matty can."
Virginia sighed in recollection.
"You don't mean to say the nigger whipped you?"
The girl shook her curly head.
"Whipped me! No! Matty don't whip; she just licks with all her muscle.... Matty's muscle's as strong as a tree limb."