“Your what?” cried Mrs. Dodge. “Your policy!”
He perceived that his policy was about to be claimed by another—not instantly, nor brazenly, but nevertheless with a slowly growing assurance that in time would browbeat him.
To-night his wife said, “Your policy!” The day would come when she would say, “Your policy?”
XI
MRS. CROMWELL’S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER
CORNELIA CROMWELL, having passed her sixteenth birthday anniversary, had begun to think seriously about life and books, and was causing her parents some anxiety. She declined a birthday party, although in former years such festivals had obviously meant to her the topmost of her heart’s desire; and she expressed her reasons for this refusal in a baffling manner. “I simply don’t care to have one,” she said, coldly. “Isn’t that enough?” Then, being further pressed, and informed that this repeated explanation of hers was one of those not uncommon explanations that do not explain, she said with visibly increasing annoyance: “Frankly, it would be a useless expense, because I don’t care to have a party.”
“She’s so queer lately,” her mother complained to Cornelia’s married sister Mildred. “She won’t go to other girls’ parties either. Of course, it isn’t desirable often, while she’s still in school, but there are a few she really ought to go to, especially now, during the holidays. She simply refuses—says she ‘doesn’t care to.’ It isn’t natural, and I don’t know what to make of it, she’s grown so moody.”
“Don’t you think young girls nearly all get like that sometimes?” Mildred suggested. “Perhaps somebody hurt her feelings at the last party she did go to.” She laughed reminiscently. “I remember when I was about her age I was terribly anxious to please that funny little Paul Thompson, who used to live next door. He danced with me twice at somebody’s birthday party, and I felt perfectly uplifted about it. Then I overheard him talking to another boy, not thinking I was near him. He said his mother had told him he must be polite to me or he wouldn’t have done it, and he certainly never would again, no matter what his mother said, because I’d walked all over his new pumps. It just crushed me, and I know I moped around the house for days afterward; but I wouldn’t tell you what was the matter. It’s the most terribly sensitive age we go through, Mamma, and I just couldn’t have told you. Perhaps there’s been a Paul Thompson for Cornelia.”
“No,” Mrs. Cromwell returned. “I’m sure there isn’t, and that nobody’s hurt her feelings. She came home from the last party she went to, a couple of months ago, in a perfect gale of high spirits; she’d had a glorious time. Then, a week or two later, when I spoke of arranging for her birthday, she got very moody—wouldn’t hear of any such thing; and she’s been so ever since. Your father’s getting cross about it and thinks we ought to do something.”
“You don’t suppose—you don’t suppose she’s fallen in love? It does happen, you know, Mamma—even at fifteen and sixteen.”