"Yes," said Lily, trying to keep extreme thankfulness out of her voice.
"Then we needn't say anything more about it." But Philip still fidgetted uneasily with his newspaper and it was evident that he had more to say, and that he much disliked the prospect of saying it.
"Of course, one likes you to have plenty of innocent and ladylike amusement," he said at last, in reluctant and distrustful tones. "Certainly one does. And Cousin Charlie's daughters and—and their friends—are everything that is nice and proper, no doubt. But I shouldn't like to think that you ever get at all—excited, or unguarded, so that people might find you a little bit—undignified."
Lily's relief was now merged in acute discomfort.
Her father must be thinking of Colin Eastwood. Had she really been undignified?
To Lily's thinking it was an unendurable word, denoting indefinable forms of unrestraint, of an underbred lack of self-respect.
"One of these days," said Philip, carefully looking away from his daughter's discomfited face and perhaps scarcely less embarrassed than was she, "one of these days I hope to see my little girl happily engaged and married to some good, suitable man. But not for a long, long while yet, and in the meantime my little Lily mustn't cheapen herself by foolish boy-and-girl nonsense."
"I haven't——" stammered Lily, scarlet.
"Hush, hush, now. You know you mustn't contradict Father like that."
The form of Philip's serious and unvehement rebukes had not varied since the days of Lily's babyhood.