“Why, of course it was Papa, Mother!”
My father and mother’s mutual love and devotion were as delightful an example of what twenty-five years of happy married life bestows as can well be conceived, and I think Hildegarde was justified. My mother, however, regarded her with wide open blue eyes, almost sightless from the dazzle of dreams—dreams of the four reckless and dangerous beings who had galloped, hopeless and frenzied, into darkness (not to say oblivion) for love of her—dreams of her own passionate, heartbroken despair when they had thus galloped.
“What?... What?...” she demanded, bewilderedly, sitting erect, with eyes like stars, looking as Juno might have looked had her peacock turned upon her, “What do you say?”
“There was Papa, Mother,” repeated Hildegarde firmly, but not (she says) reprovingly, “He was the fourth, of course!”
“Papa??? ...”
The preposterous dowdiness of this suggestion almost deprived my mother of the power of speech.
“Papa! ... Paugh!”
* * * * *
Thus did the splendid and puissant Alanadoths dispose of the cobweb conventions of mere mortals.