“Guess you’re right, baby,” Hugh replied. “I must admit that my own ideas of life have greatly changed since we came to New York sixteen years ago. I know one thing—all your friends come from the best of families, so if you do as they do, I can’t see where objection should arise.”
“Bravo, Dad!” Elinor clapped her hands in glee. “I knew you would see things in the right light. You’re so broad-minded about everything—and you’ll speak to mother?”
“Yes, dear, I’ll speak to your mother to-night, and try to reason with her a little——”
“Just a minute, Dad. I almost forgot the most important thing that I want you to try to make mother be reasonable about, and that is—Geraldine.”
“Geraldine?”
“Yes, Geraldine DeLacy. She’s a distant relative of the Thurstons, and she is visiting them at present. We girls are all crazy about her—she’s an adorable young widow, just twenty-six, and she makes the most wonderful chaperone imaginable. That’s the very thing mother so strenuously objects to.”
“I can’t see why,” Hugh seemed surprised. “The Thurstons are most desirable and surely, any relative of theirs must be an aristocrat.”
Elinor threw out her hands in a gesture of despair.
“Haven’t I wasted hours and hours trying to make mother realize that very thing,” she exclaimed, “and with no success whatever! For some unaccountable reason, she has taken an aversion to Geraldine. She objects to her age—says she’s too young to be a chaperone—she calls her frivolous for permitting the girls to address her by her Christian name and all in all there isn’t a thing the poor woman does that meets with mother’s approval.”
Hugh considered deeply. “I fail to see anything objectionable in what you have told me,” he said finally. “The only thing I can do is to judge for myself when I have the pleasure of meeting your perfect chaperone. In the meantime, precious, don’t you worry—your old Dad will always stand by you. Run along now, and have a good time.”