“I never saw anything conceited about him,” protested Mrs. Emery, admitting the rest of the indictment.
Judge Emery sat down on the sofa in question and pulled his tie into shape. “Well, folks are always conceited who find the ordinary ways of doing things not good enough for them. Lydia, what do you think of this tie? Nobody pays a proper attention to my ties but you.”
“I’ve brought you some beauties from London,” said Lydia. Then reverting with a momentary curiosity to the subject they had left, “Whatever does this man do that’s so queer?”
“Oh, he’s just one of the back-to-all-fours faddists,” said her father.
“Back-to-all-fours?” Lydia was dim as to his meaning, but willing to be amused.
“That’s just your father’s way,” exclaimed Mrs. Emery, who had not her daughter’s fondness for the Judge’s tricks of speech.
“He lives as no Dago ditch-digger with a particle of get-up-and-get in him would be willing to,” said Judge Emery finally.
Lydia turned to her mother.
“Why, it’s nothing that would interest you in the least, dear,” said the matron, taking in admiringly Lydia’s French dress. “Only for a little while everybody was talking about how strangely he acted. He was an insurance man, like Marietta’s husband, and getting on finely, when all of a sudden, for no reason on earth, he threw it all up and went to live in the woods. Do you mean to say you only paid twenty dollars for that dress?”
“In the woods!” repeated Lydia.