As he turned into the front walk it opened after him, and his wife called after him, “I’m going to give a dinner party for Lydia’s girl friends here this evening, so you’d better get your dinner down-town or at the Meltons’. I’ll telephone Julia that—”
The Judge stopped, disappointment, almost dismay, on his face. “I’m going to keep track from now on,” he called angrily, “of just how often I catch a glimpse of Lydia. I bet it won’t be five minutes a week.”
Mrs. Emery evidently did not catch what he said, and as evidently considered it of no consequence that she did not. She nodded indifferently and, drawing in her head, shut the door.
At the end of the next week the Judge announced that he had put down every time he and Lydia had been in a room together, and it amounted to just forty-five minutes, all told. Lydia, a dazzling vision in white and gold, had come downstairs on her way to a dance, and because Paul, who was to be her escort, was a little late, she told her father that now was his time for a “visit.” This question of “visiting” had grown to be quite a joke. Judge Emery clutched eagerly at anything in the nature of an understanding or common interest between them.
“Oh, I don’t know you well enough to visit with you,” he now said laughingly, “but I’ll look at you long enough so I’ll recognize you the next time I meet you on the street-car.”
Lydia sat down on his knee, lightly, so as not to crumple her gauzy draperies, and looked at her father with the whimsical expression that became her face so well. “I’m paying you back,” she said gayly. “I remember when I was a little girl I used to wonder why you came all the way out here to eat your meals. It seemed so much easier for you to get them near your office. Honest, I did.”
“Ah, that was when I was still struggling to get my toes into a crack in the wall and climb up. I didn’t have time for you then. And you’re very ungrateful to bring it up against me, for all I was doing was to wear my nose clear off on the grindstone so’s to be able to buy you such pretty trash as this.” He stroked the girl’s shimmering draperies, not thinking of what he was saying, smiling at her, delighted with her beauty, with her nearness to him, with this brief snatch of intimate talk.
“Ungrateful—yourself! What am I doing but wearing my nose off on the grindstone—Dr. Melton threatens nervous prostration every day—so’s to show off your pretty trash to the best advantage. I haven’t any time to bother with you now!” she mocked him laughingly, her hands on his shoulders.
“Well, that sounds like a bargain,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair; “I suppose I’ve got to be satisfied if you are. Are you satisfied?” he asked with a sudden seriousness. “How do you like Paul, now you know him better?”
Lydia flushed, and looked away in a tremulous confusion. “Why, when I’m with him I can’t think of another thing in the world,” she confessed in a low, ardent tone.