Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/25

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A Multiplicity of Parents
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dance, and I clapped my hands the way she liked me to do because she said one could dance so much better if some one applauded.

"Mrs. O'Shea had to come over and look after another funeral. The doctor said Papa had died of heart disease and must have had it a long time, and that was what made him so lazy. Poor Mamma cried and cried and said her heart was broken, too, just like Papa's, and that she could never dance again, but by and by she did, and she made a big hit with the very dance she had been studying so hard.

"Now this is where Daddy comes in and he was the best of all. Of course my first father was best but I can't remember him the way I can Daddy. Mrs. O'Shea says it is proper always to say you love your own mother and father better than any steps. Daddy saw Mamma do the dagger dance and he fell head over heels in love with her and came to call on her at the studio where she just stayed on after Papa died because it was big and gave her room for practice, and the lease wasn't up, and then I loved it so and hated to think of moving.

"Daddy got to coming to see us every day and he fell in love with me, too, so he said, and by and by he and Mamma went to the Little Church Around the Corner and got married,