“I went alone,” she said, occupied with her plate.
His humorous manifestations vanished and he looked somewhat concerned. “Is that so? It might have been jollier the other way, perhaps. I sometimes think I monopolize you too much, young woman. For instance, you oughtn’t to spend all your evenings with me. You ought to keep up your contemporary friendships more than you do, I’m afraid. Why don’t you ask the girls and boys here to play with you sometimes?”
“I don’t want them.”
“Would you like to give a dance—or anything?”
“No, Papa.”
He sighed. “I’m afraid your young friends bore you, Elsie.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t that exactly. I just——” She left the sentence unfinished.
“You just don’t take much interest in ’em,” he laughed.
“Well—maybe.” Still occupied with the food before her, though her being occupied with it meant no hearty consumption of it, she seemed to admit the charge. “Something like that.”
“It shouldn’t be so,” he said. “From the little I see of ’em I shouldn’t spot any of ’em for a lofty intellect precisely, but young people of that sort in a moderate-sized city like this usually do seem to older people just a pack of incomprehensible gigglers and gabblers. I suppose you never hear much from ’em except personalities and pretty slim jokes, and it may get tiresome for a girl as solid on the Napoleonic Period as you are.” He paused to chuckle. “I don’t suppose you hear much discussion of Madame de Rémusat among ’em, do you?”