Old-Dad. Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
after her with whispers and insinuations. It's the bill, of course, that I can't ever pay. That's the beastliness of it! But what I've got, of course, I must give towards it! This isn't just my opinion, you understand?" he questioned a bit sharply. "But it's my brother's, too! And it isn't just my brother's either! It's mine!"
"And that opinion is——?" prompted the man.
"I should like to ask your daughter to marry me!" said the boy.
"I admit that that opinion is—classical," drawled the man. "Shall—shall we consult the lady?"
"Yes," said the boy.
"Suppose you go to the door and call her," suggested the father.
An instant later the boy was on the threshold. With the hesitation of perplexity only he peered first to the right and then to the left.
"Miss Bretton!" he called.
"Not even 'Daphne?'" interpolated the man.
With a vague gesture of surprise the boy swung back into the room. 21
"Why—why I never even saw your daughter," he said, "until the night of the dance!"
"What?" cried the man.
Before the interrogative exclamation could even be acknowledged Daphne herself appeared upon the scene.
"Yes—Mr. Wiltoner?" she faltered.
"Mr. Wiltoner," said her father quite abruptly, "has just made you an offer of marriage."
"A—what?" gasped the girl.
"Mr. Wiltoner—I would say," drawled her father, "has—just done himself the honor of asking your hand in marriage."
"What?" repeated the girl, her voice like a smothered scream.
"And he's quite poor, I judge," said her father, "with all his own way to make in the world—and a crippled brother besides. And whoever marries him now will have the devil of a time pitching in neck and neck to help him run his farm. Have to carry wood, I mean, and water, and help plow and help scrub and 22 help kill pigs—and help wrangle with the crippled brother and——"
"What?" gasped the girl.
"Oh, of course, I admit it's very old-fashioned," murmured her father, "very quixotic—very absurd—and altogether what any decent lad would do under the circumstances. And you, of course, will refuse him to the full satisfaction of your own thoroughly modern sense of chivalry and self-respect Nevertheless——" From the half-mocking raillery of the older man's eyes a sudden glance wistful as a caress shot down across the boy's sensitive face and superb young figure. "Nevertheless," he readdressed his daughter almost harshly, "I would to God that you were old- fashioned enough to faint on his neck and accept him!"
"Why—why Father!" stammered the girl. "I'm engaged to the—to the English professor at college!"
Above the faint flare of a fresh cigarette the man's ironic smile broke suddenly again through shrewdly narrowed eyes.
"'Are'? Or 'were'?" he asked. "'Yet', you mean? 'Still?'"
"Oh, of course, I know I can't marry anyone now," quivered the 23 girl. "Everything's over—everything's smashed. It's only that—that——"
With the hand that had just tossed away a half-burnt match her father reached out a bit abruptly to clasp the boy's fingers.
"You hear, Richard?" he asked. "Your offer, it seems, is rejected! So the incident is closed, my boy—with honor to all and 'malice towards none!' Completely closed!" he adjured with a certain finality. "And the little lady——" he bowed to his daughter, "suffers no more—fear—nor ever will, I trust, while her life remains in my keeping." From his pocket he snatched a card suddenly, scribbled a line on it, and handed it to the boy. "I'm going South to-morrow," he smiled. "Daphne and I. To be gone rather indefinitely I imagine. About January send me a line! About your own luck, you know, that farm of yours and everything! It's very interesting!" With faintly forked eyebrows he turned to watch the precipitated parting between the boy and girl—a slender, quivering hand stealing limply into a clasp 24 that wrung it like a torture, blue eyes still baffled with perplexity lifting heavily to black eyes as quick as a bared nerve. "Good-bye!" said the man quite trenchantly.
"Good-bye," choked the girl.
"Good-bye!" snapped the boy.
Then the man and his daughter stood alone again.
"There's a bath-room down the hall!" said the man. "And my own room is just beyond. Take a tub! Take a nap. Take—something! I've got a letter to write and don't want any one around!"
It was quite evident also that he didn't want any things around, either. The instant his daughter had left him he turned with a single impetuous gesture and swept all the books and papers from his desk. It might have been the tantrumous impulse of a child, or the unconscious urge of the spirit towards unhampered elbow room.
Certainly there was neither childishness nor spirituality in the plain businesslike paper and strong, blunt handwriting that went to the composition of the letter. An almost breathless immediacy 25 seemed also a distinctly actuating factor in the task. As fast ever as hand could reach pen and pen could reach ink and ink could reach paper again the writer drove to his mark.
To Miss Claudia Merriwayne,
President———— College (said the letter).
So it is you, dear Clytie Merriwayne, who have so peremptorily thus become the arbitrator of my family fame and fortunes?
God Almighty! How Time flies! You, old enough to have a college. And I, old enough to have a daughter expelled from the same! Why did you do it, Clytie? Not have a college, I mean, but expel my daughter? Truly she seems to me like rather a nice little kid. And now I suppose in the cackle and comment of all concerned she stands forth "ruined" before the world. Yet when all's said and done, Clytie Merriwayne, who did the "ruining?" Not the little girl certainly. Most emphatically not that splendid boy! Who else then except yourself? Personally it would seem to me somehow at the moment as though you had bungled your college 26 just about as badly as I have bungled my daughter. My only conceivable excuse is that I've been a damned Ignoramus! What's yours?
Here I had a fine, frank, clean, prankish little girl who didn't know a man from a woman, and you have changed her into a cowering, tortured, and altogether bewildered young recreant who never again, as long as time lasts, perhaps, will ever be able to tell a saint from a devil, or a lark from a lust, or a college president from any other traducer of youth and innocence. Yet you are considered to be something of a Specialist in girls, I should suppose. As well as once having been a girl yourself.
How ever did you happen to do it, I say? How ever in the world did you happen to do it?
"For discipline," of course you will most instantly affirm. "A necessary if drastic example to all the young lives in your charge. Youth being," as you will undoubtedly emphasize, "the formative period of character." It certainly is, Clytie! The simplest garden catalogue will tell you the same. 'Young things 27 grow on the morning sun!' That's the phrase—everywhere. But don't ever forget, Clytie, that they blight just as easily on that selfsame sun! And if you have blighted my little girl instead of 'grown' her I shall not easily forgive you.
"What?" I can hear you demand in hectic righteousness. "Do I claim for one minute that my little daughter has committed a Propriety instead of an Impropriety?" (Oh, Clytie, haven't you learned even yet that Youth is almost never proper but, oh, so seldom vicious?) Admitting perfectly frankly to all the world that my daughter has committed a very grave Impropriety I must still contend that she has by no means committed a Viciousness! And even God Almighty, that shrewdest of Accountants, exacts such little toll for Improprieties. It's these sharkish overhead charges of middlemen like you that strain Youth's reputational resources so.
Far be it from me, alas, to deny that there undoubtedly is a hideous amount of evil in the world. But more and more I stand