"Common! Well, when it comes to being common, my dear child, I don't think there was anything fastidious about the choice you made last June. After all, Delicatessen Dick isn't exactly——"
"Just a minute, mother. I want to get this thing straight. I'm to marry your chubby little friend in order to save the family fortunes—is that it?"
"N-no. I don't mean just that. I merely——"
"What do you mean, then? I want to hear you say it."
"You could do a really big thing for your father. You must have seen how old he's grown in the last six months. I don't see how you can stand by and not want to help. He had a chance. Ben Gartz practically offered to take him into the business. But you were deliberately rude to him. No man with any pride——"
Charley began to laugh then; not prettily. "Oh, mother, you quaint old thing!" Belle stiffened. "I don't want to insult you, don't you know, but I can't make a thing out of what you've said except that if I marry this chubby little ridiculous old sport he'll take Dad into the business and we'll all live happily ever after and I'll be just like the noble heroine who sells herself to the rich old banker to pay the muggidge. Oh mother!" She was laughing again; and then, suddenly, she was crying, her face distorted. She was crying terribly.
"Sh-sh-sh! Your father'll hear you! There's nothing to make a scene about."
"No scene!" said Charley, through her tears. "If you can't cry when your mother dies when can you cry!"
She turned away from her then. Belle Kemp looked a little frightened. But at the door she said what she still had to say. "He's coming here to dinner to-night."
Charley, lifting heavy arms to take off her hat, seemed not to hear. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment—stared at the tear-stained red-eyed girl. At what she saw she began to sob again, weakly. Then she shook herself angrily, and pushed her hair back from her forehead with a hand that was closed into a fist. She went into the living room, stood before her father reading there.