1

UNTIL Daphne Bretton's peremptory departure from college she had neither known nor liked her father well enough to distinguish him with a nick name. But on that momentous day in question, when blurting into the problematical presence of an unfamiliar parent in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar city she flung her unhappy news across his book-cluttered desk, the appellation slipped from her stark lips as though it were the only fluid phrase in a wooden-throated world.

"Old-Dad!" she said, "I have been expelled from college!"

From under the incongruous thatch of his snow-white hair her young father lifted his extraordinarily young face with a snarl like the snarl of a startled animal.

"Why?—Why Daphne!" he gasped. "What?"

With her small gloved hand fumbling desperately at the great 2 muffly collar of her coat the young girl repeated her statement.

"I—I have been expelled from college!" she said.

"Yes, but Daphne!—What for?" demanded her father. His own face was suddenly as white as hers, his lips as stark. "What for?" he persisted.

Twice the young girl's lips opened and shut in an utter agony of inarticulation. Then quite sharply the blonde head lifted, the shoulders squared, and the whole slender, quivering little body braced itself to meet the traditional blow of the traditional Avenger.

"For—for having a boy in my room—at night," said the girl.

Before the dumb, abject misery in the young blue eyes that lifted so heavily to his, a grin like the painted grin on a sick clown's face shot suddenly across the father's mobile mouth.

"Oh I hope he was a nice boy!" he said quite abruptly. "Blonde or brunette?"

"Why—Why—Father!" stammered the girl. "I—I thought you would— 3 would kill me!"

"Kill you?" mumbled her father. More essentially at the moment he seemed concerned with an overturned bottle of ink that was splashing its sinister pool across his morning's work. "Kill you?" he repeated vaguely. Across the high, intervening barrier of books and catalogues he craned his neck suddenly with a certain sharp intentness.

"And is your shoulder broken, too?" he asked very gently.

"My shoulder?" quivered the girl.

"It sags so," murmured her father.

"It's my suit-case," said the girl. "My heavy suit-case."

"Why not put it down?" asked the man.

Across the young girl's fluctuant face a dozen new miseries flared hotly.

"I didn't—just know—whether you'd want me to put it down," she said.

"You've come home, haven't you?" questioned the man. "Home is supposed to be where your father is, isn't it?"

"It never has been," said the girl quite simply.

Like a clash of swords the man's eyes smote across the girl's 4 and the girl's across the man's. The ironic grin was still twisting wryly at one corner of the man's mouth but under the mocking fend of his narrowing eye lids a glisten of tears showed suddenly.

"Oh—Father," rallied the girl. "They called me an evil name! They——" With a gesture of ultimate bewilderment and despair she took a single step towards him. "Oh, Father," she gasped. "What is it about boys that makes it so wicked to have them around?" And pitched over headlong in a dead faint at his feet.

When blackness turned into whiteness again she found herself lying limply in the big Oxford chair before the fire with a slate-colored hound sniffing rather interrogatively at her finger-tips and the strange man whom she had called "father" leaning casually with one elbow on the mantel-piece while he stood staring down at her through a great, sweet, foggy blur of cigarette smoke.

"Wh—what is the blue dog's name?" she asked a bit vaguely.

"Creep-Mouse," said the man.

"I'm—I'm glad there's a dog," she whispered. 5

"So it's all right now, is it?" smiled the man. The smile was all in his eyes now and frankly mechanical still—a faint flare of mirth through a quizzical fretwork of pain.

"Yes, it's all right—now," said the girl, "unless of course——" Edging weakly forward to the front of the chair she clutched out gropingly for its cool, creaking straw arms and straightened up suddenly very stiff and tense. "Aren't you even going to ask me," she faltered, "what the boy was doing in my room—at night?"

"Oh, of course, I'm only human," admitted her father. Very leisurely as he spoke he stopped to light a fresh cigarette and stood for a moment blowing innumerable rings of smoke into space. "Only somehow—that's a matter," he smiled, "that I'd rather hear directly from the boy himself!"

"From the boy himself?" stammered the girl. With her slender, silken-shod limbs, the short skirt of the day, the simple blouse, the tousled hair, she looked for all the world like a 6 little child just jumping up to play. "Why—why he's here now!" she said.

"Here now?" cried her father. "Where?"

"Downstairs," said the girl. "We came on together."

"Came on together?" demanded her father. "From college, you mean? Two days and a night?"

"Yes," said the girl.

With a sharp intake of his breath that might have meant anything the man stepped suddenly forward.

Towering to her own little height the girl stood staunchly to meet him.

"Why you don't think for one single moment that—that it was fun, do you?" she questioned whitely. "You don't think for one single solitary little moment that I wanted him to come, do you? Or that there was anything very specially amusing for him in the coming?" Whiter and whiter the little face lifted. "It was only that he said I couldn't come alone to—to face whatever had to be faced. And if he came first he said it would seem like telling tales on me instead of on himself. So——"

"Go and get him!" said her father quite sharply. 7

With unquestioning obedience the girl started for the door. Half way across the rug she stopped and swung round squarely.

"He will say it was all his fault," she said. "But it wasn't! I— I sort of dared him to do it!"

"Just a minute!" called her father. "When you come back with him——"

"Am I to come back with him?" protested the girl.

"When you come back with him——" repeated her father, "if I ask him to be seated you may leave the room at once—at once, you understand? But if I shouldn't ask him to sit down——"

"Then I am to stay and—see it through?" shivered the girl.

"Then you are to stay and see it through," said her father.

With a little soft thud the door shut between them.

When it opened again the man was still standing by the fireplace blowing gray smoke into space. With a casualness that savored 8 almost of affectation he stopped to light another cigarette before glancing up half askance to greet the hesitant footstep on the threshold.

"Why, come in!" he ordered.

Without further parleying the two young people appeared before him.

In the five minutes of her absence the young girl seemed to have grown younger, smaller, infinitely more broken even than her father had remembered her. But almost any girl would have looked unduly frail perhaps before the superbly handsome and altogether stalwart young athlete who loomed up so definitely beside her.

As though his daughter suddenly had ceased to exist the father's glance narrowed sharply towards the boy's clean young figure— the eager, worried eyes—the sensitive nostril—the grimly resolute young mouth, and in that glance a gasp that might have meant anything slipped through his own lips.

"You're—you're a keen looking lad!" he said. "But I think I could lick you at tennis!"

"Sir?" faltered the boy.

Quizzically but not unkindly the man resumed his stare. "I don't 9 think I happen to have heard your name," he affirmed with some abruptness.

"Wiltoner," said the boy. "Richard Wiltoner."

"Sit down, Richard," said the man.

Like some tortured creature at bay the boy turned sharply to the window and back towards the door again.

"No, I thank you, Sir!" he protested. "I simply couldn't sit down!" Restively he crossed to the bookcase and swung around with a jerk to rake his impatient eyes across the girl's lingering presence. "Maybe I'll never sit down again!" he said.

"Nor eat?" drawled the older man. "Nor—sleep?"

"Nor eat, nor sleep!" said the boy.

"Yes, that's just it," whispered the girl. "That's just the way he was on the train—miles and miles it must have been—from the engine to the last car—all the time I mean—night and day— stalking up and down—up and down!"

"Little Stupid!" said her father.

"Who?—I?" gasped the girl. For a second bewilderment she stared 10 from the man's face to the boy's. "O—h!" she cried out in sudden enlightenment. "You asked him to sit down, didn't you?" And fled from the room.

With a shiver of relief the boy turned squarely then to meet the man. The quizzically furrowed lines around the man's mouth still held their faint ironic humor but the boy's face in the full light showed strangely stark.

"Well—Lad," said the man very softly. "What have you got to tell me about it?"

"Why that's just it!" cried the boy. "What is there to tell except that I've been a thoughtless cad,—a——"

"How—thoughtless?" said the man.

"And that your daughter isn't one bit to blame!" persisted the boy. "Not one bit! And for the rest of it——" he cried out desperately. "What am I expected to say? What ought I to say? For God's sake what do you want me to say? Oh, of course, I've read yarns," he flushed. "French novels and all that sort of thing, but when it comes down to one's self and a—and a girl you know——Why—what's the matter with everybody?" he demanded 11 furiously. "A fellow isn't rotten just because he's a fellow! And it isn't even as though I had wanted to be rotten but wasn't! I never thought of being rotten!" Hotter and hotter the red shame flared in his face. "It's a nasty, dirty, evil-minded world!" he stormed. "Why you'd think to hear Miss Merriwayne talk that——"

"Miss who?" said the older man.

"Miss Merriwayne," said the boy. "Claudia Merriwayne—the president of the college, you know."

"No, I didn't know," said the man.

"She's a fiend!" said the boy. "An utterly merciless——" In a hectic effort to regain his self-control he bit the sentence in two and began to repace the room. "There—there was a dance at the college that night," he resumed at last with reasonable calmness.

"I don't go in much for that sort of thing. I don't live in town, you see, but miles and miles outside. I'm just a 'farmer,' you know," he confided with his first faint ghost of a smile. "My brother and I have a bit of a ranch outside. We're trying very hard to be 'scientific farmers.' It's the deuce of a job! And 12 whenever there comes a night that I've got 'pep' enough to stay awake I'd rather ride somehow than fuss around with people. Sometimes I ride all night! I've got a horse named Brainstorm! And he's some devil!" In the instant's transfiguring glow he was all young god again, superb, defiant. Then as though with a spasm of pain his young mouth tightened to a single determinate line. With the air of one suddenly very tired he stopped his restless pacing and backed into the supporting angle of the bookcase.

"But on this particular night—that I was telling you about," he resumed unhappily, "I had a sort of a feeling somehow that I'd like to go to the dance. It isn't always easy, you know," he confided with unexpected ingenuousness. "After the long day's work, I mean, with your back broken and your arms sprained, to come in and round up your own hot tub and your own shaving things and your own supper and the evening clothes you haven't even seen for six months. And I forgot the supper," he smiled faintly. "We haven't any woman at the house just now. But after 13 you get to the dance you don't mind!" he brightened transiently. "It's so bright and sweet-smelling! So many lights and colors! And so many funny dresses! And the music certainly is bully! And then all of a sudden at some silly hour like eleven o'clock everything shuts down and you have to go home! Why you'd only just come! Just got into your step, I mean! Just met the girls you wanted to meet! Just begun to laugh! Just begun to fool! That's the trouble with college parties," he frowned. "They're so darn institutional! No hanging round afterwards to forage in the kitchen and help put the house to bed, no nice jolly dawdling about on the front steps to look at the moon, no funny, bumpy walk home through a plowed field with a girl in high-heeled shoes and a lace tidy over her head! Just zip! Like that! 'Eleven o'clock! Everybody get out!' All that fun and prettiness and everything snuffed out like a sour candle just because some old dame wants to go to bed! It's too—it's too abrupt!" said the boy.

"So you felt?" prodded the man.

"Felt?" cried the boy. "Why at five minutes of eleven I felt 14 so fit I could have run nine miles to help put out a fire. But at eleven I was so mad I'd have run twenty just to start one!"

"So what did you do?" said the man.

"I swore I wouldn't go home," flushed the boy, "until at least I'd had something to eat! You know what college feeds are, a cent's worth of salad and the juice of one cracker? Your daughter laughed. She thought it was funny. 'Oh, what a pity,' she said, 'that you can't have the cold roast chicken that's up in my room!' 'Where is your room?' I asked. I was laughing too. 'Oh, just round the corner in the next building,' she said. 'Trot along over with me and if nobody's round I'll scoot upstairs and toss it down to you!' It was further than I thought," said the boy. "And very nice. Just a two-minute cut across the campus, but stars, you know, and a crunch of snow, and the funny fat shapes of the orchestra instruments running for their train. And Lord but I was hungry! But when we got to the dormitory there were too many people round, it seemed, too many lights, too much passing, not a single shadow in the whole 15 world apparently that was big enough to toss a roast chicken into—let alone hide my great hulking shape. 'I just darsn't!' said your daughter. 'Somebody surely would see me, a matron or a proctor or the night watchman or some body!' And all of a sudden," flushed the boy, "it seemed to me so absolutely idiotic that a girl who'd never done any harm in her life should be shut up in a place where she couldn't even proffer food to a starving friend or finish out a dance or do any other decent normal thing just because some cranky old dame had other ideas. 'Well, there's no old dame who owns me!' I said. So if you're afraid to go get the chicken I'll come and get it myself!' 'Yes—I can— see you!' laughed your daughter. She was standing on the step as she spoke and she had on something very red and sort of cunning with a hood all black fur around her face and as she tilted up her chin to the light it looked as though even her hair was laughing at you. 'Well, I'm coming!' I laughed back. 'You darsn't!' she said. In an hour I was there! Oh, of course, I know I oughtn't to have done it!" conceded the boy. "But upon my 16 soul I swear I didn't think anything about it except that it was putting something over on some of those old dames! All this fuss about it's being a girl's room never entered my head for a moment I tell you! I've always had such an awful lot of girl cousins tumbling around. And it was all so darned easy after the moon went down! Such a nifty fire-escape and the toughest sort of an old wisteria vine and——"

"Was—she expecting you?" asked the man.

"No,—that was the trouble," flushed the boy. "Maybe at first she had wondered a bit if I'd really have the nerve—I don't know. But by the time I'd got there she'd started for bed. Was in her wrapper, I mean, with her hair down. Bare feet, you know, and all that sort of thing. And when I opened the window and slipped in across the edge she started to scream. Knew who I was all at once and all that—but the scream got started first. And I knew, of course, that wouldn't do, so I jumped and caught her in my arms to try and smother it out. And the door opened—and in walked President Merriwayne herself. I don't know what she 17 was doing there in that dormitory at that time of night. It may have been just accident or somebody may have overheard us fooling out on the front steps the hour before—I don't know. It just happened—that's all," said the boy. "And there was an awful scene, of course. Things said, I mean, that I shouldn't have supposed a woman would say to a young girl. And two or three teachers or proctors came running in. And there was a faculty meeting later of course. And somebody blabbed to a chambermaid and the chambermaid blabbed to somebody else. And a reporter got hold of it and——"

"And a reporter got hold of it?" said the man.

"Yes," shivered the boy.

"Pictures?" asked the man.

"Yes," said the boy.

"Pretty horrid?" said the man.

"Very horrid," said the boy.

For an instant there seemed to be no sound at all in the room except the sound of flame sucking at the birch juices on the hearth.

Then the man looked up sharply from the birch log to the boy's 18 quivering face.

"Well—was the roast chicken good?" he asked.

"S—ir?" stammered the boy.

"And so——?" prompted the man.

From the boy's lips a long shuddering sigh escaped. "And so," said the boy, "I have ruined your daughter's life."

"And what do you propose to do about it?" asked the man.

With a quick squaring of his shoulders the boy drew his fine young body to its full height.

"I propose to do whatever you want me to do," he said.

"Such as what?" asked the man.

"Such as anything!" said the boy. Almost imperceptibly his breath quickened. "Why, when I came here just now," he cried, "I came, of course, expecting to be stormed at, to be cursed, to be insulted, to be told I was a liar, to have everything I said or did rammed down my throat again! But you?——All you've done is just to listen to me! And believe me! And laugh! It's as though I'd hurt you so much you were sorriest of all for me—and were 19 trying every darned way you knew to keep me from going mad! It's as though——" From the sudden slight sag of his shoulders he rallied again with a gesture of folded arms and finality. "I tell you I want to do whatever you want me to do," he repeated quite simply.

"Have you talked with anyone—about this?" asked the man.

"Just with my brother," said the boy.

"And what did he say?" asked the man.

"It's the brother who runs the farm with me," explained the boy. "He's a cripple and rather a bit nervous now and then, but he reads an awful lot of books. Not just farm books I mean—not just scientific books, but all sorts of——"

"By which you are intending to imply," interrupted the man, "that your brother's opinion, even though nervous, may be considered fairly sophisticated?"

"Oh, yes," said the boy. "And we went into it all very thoroughly. All the scandal and notoriety of the expulsion, I mean, and the fright and the mortification, and the silly sap-headed mothers 20 who won't let their daughters chum with your daughter any more, and the old cats who all their lives long will be pussy footing 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 astonished before the extraordinarily small amount of it that smoulders in young people's bodies 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'oeuvre—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 imagine, that you didn't have time to pack up any of your college things for you certainly won't need anything—academic in the place we're heading for! It's not any South that you've ever heard of that we're going to, you understand?" he explained with the faintest possible tint of edginess in his tone. "No Palm Beaches! No pink sash-ribbons! No tennis! No velvet golf courses! No airy—fairy—anythings! But a South below the South! 36 A South all heat and glare and sweat and jet-greens jungles! Tropics and slime! Rough! Tough! Pretty nasty some of the time. Violently beautiful—almost always! And we're going down to hunt!" he added with certain decisiveness. "And to fish! And to study citrus fruits when there's nothing else to do! And you might just as well know it now as later," he resumed with all his old insouciance. "I—am—also going to find me a wife if such a thing is humanly possible."

"A—wife?" gasped the girl. "Oh, this—this eternal marrying business!" she shivered. "If it's all so dreadful, about men, I mean, why do women keep marrying? What's the righteousness of it? What's the decency? What's it all about?"

"Don't forget that I'm one of these 'dreadful men,'" smiled her father.

"Yes—I—know," quivered the girl.

"But——" Like a butterfly slipping out of its cocoon one shoulder slipped lacy-white from the blue puffy-quilt. "What about my own mother?" she demanded.

"Your mother has been dead for fifteen years," said the man.

"Yes—but Father," persisted the girl. 37

With folded arms the man stood watching her bright young color wax—and wane again.

"If there's anything you want to ask," he suggested, "maybe you'd better ask it now—and get it over with."

"Oh, I didn't want to be inquisitive," stammered the girl. "It's only that—that servants and relatives talk so—and I know so little. You—you and mother didn't live together, did you?" she questioned quite abruptly.

"No," said the man.

"You—you mean there was trouble?" flushed the girl.

"There was—some trouble," said the man.

"You mean that you—didn't like her?" probed the merciless little voice.

"No—I—didn't—like her," said the man without a flicker of expression.

Clutching the blue quilt about her the girl jumped to the floor and ran swiftly to him.

"Oh, Father!" she cried. "Whatever in the world will I do if you don't like me?"

"But I do like you!" smiled her father. Shy as a boy he reached out and touched her sunny hair. "Only one condition!" he rallied 38 with sudden and unaffected sternness. "When you broke into my study just now you called me 'Old-Dad'! Up to that moment I had considered myself—some—young—buck. Never again—as long as you live—I warn you—ever call me anything except Old-Dad! Darned if it isn't sobering!"