dimple

High everybody

I will be grateful for your help in this strange (to my mind) case of word usage.

It is from a novel by L. Moriarty (Australian writer) “Nine perfect strangers”.

A young father brings home from a playground his two years old daughter. He puts her down for a nap, stands looking at her. And here is what I do not quite understand:

“He could still see her dimple, which meant she was pretending to be asleep, hardly able to suppress her hilarity.”

Also in a few lines:

“He stood, marveling at her dimple and the roundness od her baby cheeks.”

What I cannot understand, how a dimple can mean that “she was pretending to be asleep.” How can an indentation on the chin be a sign of sleeping or non-sleeping? Or my understanding of this word is not correct.

Thanks in advance.

Why chin? I took it she was smiling in her feigned sleep and a dimple formed on her cheek.

Thanks. It turns out to be my lack of knowledge not so much in the language as in human anatomy. I even checked these dimples in the Net - they are there, on cheeks.
Thanks again

The thing on the chin, I would call that one 'cleft chin' (although there are other kinds of cleavage I like better 👁 Smile :)
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boozer said:

The thing on the chin, I would call that one 'cleft chin' (although there are other kinds of cleavage I like better 👁 Smile :)
)

Oh, I understand you perfectly well