Old-Dad. Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
compared with the undue 28 proportion of it that flames so frankly in older people's minds! In this case in point for instance, it's your whole moral premises that are wrong! It isn't just that the boy wouldn't have hurt her if he could. But that he couldn't have hurt her if he would! Both equally "pure in heart!" Both romping equally impishly through a moment's impulsive adventure! My God! I'd hate to be the first evil thought that had ever butted into a youngster's mind!
But enough! What you need in your college, perhaps, is a little less French and a little more Biology! Quite a bit more mercy certainly! This setting steel traps for Vice and catching Innocence instead is getting to be an altogether too common human experience. And some of us who have watched the writhings of an accidentally incarcerated household pet have decided long since that even a varmint doesn't quite deserve a steel trap!
But all this, Clytie, being neither here nor there, I come now to the real point of my letter which is to ask a favor.
My little daughter is pretty sick, Clytie—sick mentally, I mean—sex-scared, socially and emotionally disorganized. On the 29 particular trip I am planning for the winter into the more or less primitive and lawless wild-lands of the far South I am hoping that she will find plentiful opportunity to reconstruct her courage from the inherent principles alone of Right and Wrong. But failing this hope by the time the Northern summer is due——?
Have you no memories, Clytie, of another college room? And another indiscretion? Which beginning soberly with a most worthy desire to exchange Philosophy note books ended——if my memory serves right——with a certain amount of kissing. Yet will you contend for one single instant, Clytie, that your thoughts that night were one whit less clean than my daughter's? That there were four "improper" youngsters in that episode, instead of two as now, does not greatly in my mind refute the similarity. Nor the fortuitous chance by which one boy had just vanished over the window-sill and you into another room when that blow fell! Do you remember the things that were said then, Clytie Merriwayne? To your room-mate, I mean? Poor little frightened 30 baby! Seventeen, wasn't she? And cut her throat at dawn rather than meet what had to be met? Pretty little white throat it was too as I remember it. With a rather specially tender and lilting little contralto voice that would have been singing lullabys in another four or five years. And the boy? The boy who was caught, I mean? Not a bad sort at all! Was rather intending to make something fairly decent of himself—up to then! But after the blood-red things the girl's father and mother said to him? He went a bit "batty" after that, some people said! A bit wild anyway! Eighteen or nineteen he must have been? Oh, ye gods, what a waste! Babies all! And to make them suffer so! Just by the thickness of a door you escaped it, Clytie! Just by the whish of a skirt! Except for that——?
Well this is the favor, Clytie. If by Summer my little girl is still staggering under the nervous and moral burden of feeling herself the only "improper" person in the world, I shall ask your permission to tell her the incident here noted, assuring you of course in all fairness and decency—if I am any judge of 31 young character—that she will never tell on you as you have told on her!
As for the rest if I have written over-garrulously I crave your pardon. This turning the hands of the clock backwards is slower work than turning them ahead.
For old time's sake believe me at least
Sincerely yours,
JAFFREY BRETTON.
With a sigh of relief then he rose from his desk, lit another cigarette, and started down the hall, with Creep-Mouse, the blue hound, skulking close behind him.
As he crossed the threshold of his own room and glanced incidentally towards his bed a gasp of purely optical astonishment escaped him. All hunched up in a pale blue puffy-quilt his lovely little daughter lay ensconced among his snow-white pillows. Across her knees innumerable sheets of paper fluttered. Close at her elbow a discarded box of pencils lay tossed like a handful of jack-straws. And the great blue eyes that peered out at him from the cloud of bright gold hair were all brimmed up again with terror and tears.
"I'm—I'm writing to John," she said. 32
"John?" queried her father.
"Why—yes—the English professor—at college—don't you remember?" faltered the girl. "Don't—don't you want to know about John?"
"No, I don't!" said the man. "There's nothing important about 'John' that 'John' won't have a chance to show for himself—in this immediate situation."
"Isn't it—isn't it—Hell?" quivered the girl.
"N—o—o," said her father. "I shouldn't consider it just Hell. But I admit it's something of a poser for a man in John's position. He's one of the faculty of course?"
"Yes," said the girl.
"And was at the faculty meeting—presumably when——"
"Yes," said the girl.
"Was your engagement—announced?" asked her father quite abruptly. "Generally known, I mean, among the girls?"
"No—not—exactly," said the girl.
"U—m—m," said her father. From his wordless stare at the wall 33 he glanced down a bit sharply at the wan little face before him. "Heard from him yet?" he demanded.
"No, not yet," said the girl. "Why he doesn't know where I am! Nobody knows where I am, I tell you! I just ran away, I tell you! I didn't even wait to pack! I—I——But, of course, I will hear!" she asserted passionately. "I will! I will! It isn't that I expect to—to marry him now," she explained piteously. "Nobody of course—would want to marry me now. It's only that——"
Before the sudden rush of color to her face her father gave a little startled gasp.
"Hanged if you're not pretty!" he said. "Shockingly pretty!" With an almost amused interest his eyes swept down across the exquisite little face and figure all muffled up to the tips of its ears in the great blue puffy-quilt against the snow-white pillows. "Truly when I came in here just now," he laughed, "I thought a magazine-cover had come to life on my bed!" With the laughter still on his lips all the mischief went suddenly out of his eyes. "You heard what I said just now about 34 going South to-morrow?" he asked a bit trenchantly. "I'm sorry if it seems peremptory. But my plans have been made for some time. I had intended to take only—Creep-Mouse with me."
"Creep-Mouse?" questioned the girl.
"Oh, of course, there are a dozen other dogs up country that I could choose from," reflected her father with a somewhat frowning introspection. "But when it comes to traveling about and putting up with things, Creep-Mouse alone combines the essential characteristics of an undauntable disposition—with folding legs."
"Oh, of course, I can't speak too positively about my undauntable disposition," rallied the girl with the faintest possible smile, "but I certainly will try to take the hint about the folding legs——"
"Hint?" snapped her father. "Oh, it wasn't so much the adaptability business I was thinking about as it was about the dog!" With a gesture almost embarrassed he reached down suddenly and drew the hound's plushy ear through his fingers. "Oh, hang it all, Daphne!" he resumed quite abruptly, "you and I might easily not like the same opera or the same hors-d'œuvre—but 35 I'd hate anyone round who didn't like the same dog."
"I—adore—Creep-Mouse!" said Daphne.
"Truly?" quizzed her father.
"Truly!" twinkled Daphne.
"Oh, all right then," said her father, "I guess we understand each other!"
"Perfectly," nodded Daphne.
"For all time," said her father.
"All time," acquiesced Daphne.
With his watch in his hand and his dark eyes narrowed to some unspoken thought he thrust out his last admonishment to her.
"Then take all the brace there is!" he said, "and hustle out and get some new clothes! It's quite lucky on the whole, I