'If I were a father and had a daughter I think I'd love the daughter more than a son really, I would,' I began obliquely, as if on another subject, to divert her attention. I was blushing, I do confess.
'Why's that?' she asked.
Ah! So she was listening!
'Well, I don't really know, Liza. You see, once I knew a father who was a very strict grim kind of man, but he used to kneel before his daughter and kiss her hands and feet. Really, he couldn't stop feasting his eyes on her. She'd be dancing at a party and he'd stand in the same spot for hours without taking his eyes off her. He was besotted with her - that I can understand. At night, when she was tired and fell asleep, he'd wake up and go and kiss her in her sleep and make the sign of the cross over her. He went around in a greasy old frock-coat, was tight fisted towards everyone else, but he would spend his last copeck on her, buy her expensive presents - and the joy it brought him if the gift was to her liking! Fathers always love their daughters more than a mother does. For some girls home is a very happy place. But I don't think I would let a daughter of mine get married.'
'But why not?' she asked with the faintest of laughs.
'I'd be jealous, really! How could she kiss someone else, love a stranger more than her father? The thought of it pains me. Of course, all this is nonsense, in the end everyone comes to see reason. But I think that before letting her marry I'd have exhausted myself with worry; I'd have found fault with every suitor. However, in the end I'd let her marry the one she loved. You see, the man the daughter falls in love with always strikes the father as worst of all. It's always been like that. It causes a lot of trouble in families.'
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