“Yes—and don’t forget the fun you’d have.”
“But good Lord, think of it. Three months away from Second Avenue.”
“The finest three months of your life—worth all the rest of your stupid, silly past time put together.”
Almost trembling in his eagerness, the old man waited for his son’s reply. The latter took out a cigarette, lighted it, and gazed meditatively through the smoke. “Fifty thousand!” he whispered greedily. “And I suppose I could stand the hardship.”
Then he looked up, faintly smiling. “I’ll go, if Lenore will let me,” he pronounced at last.
III
The exact moment that her name was on Ned’s lips, Lenore Hardenworth herself, in her apartment in a region of fashionable apartments eight blocks from the Cornet home, was also wondering at the perverse ways of parents. It was strange how their selfish interests could disarrange one’s happiest plans. All in all, Lenore was in a wretched mood, savagely angry at the world in general and her mother in particular.
They had had a rather unpleasant half-hour over their cigarettes. Mrs. Hardenworth had been obdurate; Lenore’s prettiest pouts and most winsome ways hadn’t moved her a particle. The former knew all such little wiles; time was when she had practiced them herself with consummate art, and she was not likely to be taken in with them in her old age! Seeing that these were fruitless, her daughter had taken the more desperate stand of anger, always her last resort in getting what she wanted, but to-night it some way failed in the desired effect. There had been almost, if not quite, a scene between these two handsome women under the chandelier’s gleam—and the results, from Lenore’s point of view, had been absolutely nil. Mrs. Hardenworth had calmly stood her ground.
It was the way of the old, Lenore reflected, to give too much of their thought and interest to their own fancied ills. Not even a daughter’s brilliant career could stand between. And who would have guessed that the “nervousness” her mother had complained of so long, pandered to by a fashionable quack and nursed like a baby by the woman herself, should ever lead to such disquieting results. The doctor had recommended a sea voyage to the woman, and the old fool had taken him at his word.
It was not that Lenore felt she could not spare, for some months, her mother’s guiding influence. It was merely that sea voyages cost money, and money, at that particular time, was scarce and growing scarcer about the Hardenworth apartment. Lenore needed all that was available for her own fall and winter gowns, a mink or marten coat to take the place of her near-seal cloak, and for such entertaining as would be needed to hold her place in her own set. Seemingly the only course that remained was to move forward the date of her marriage to Ned, at present set for the following spring.