"I can't!" said Richard. "Not for years and years and years!— not to make a girl comfortable, I mean! There won't be any money. . . . There's my brother, you know; and I've got so many animals. . . . It's queer about animals," he stammered, "you— you can't fail the old ones when they're old, and you can't fail the young ones when they're young. It's like any other kind of family, I suppose," he smiled. "All fun and all responsibility! But never any time! And never any money!" Quite furiously he resumed the hair-brushing. "Oh, after all," he remarked, "this isn't so awfully different from getting the snarls out of Brainstorm's mane. Only Brainstorm's mane is brown. And yours?" With a cry of sheer joy he stood off and surveyed his handiwork. 233 "And yours—" he laughed, "looks like a bunch of short-stemmed jonquils!"
"Oh, how—awful!" cried Daphne.
"No, it's cunning," flushed Richard.
A little bit teased by the laugh, Daphne met her own embarrassment with a fresh command.
"Oh, please—run quick now," she begged, "and tell my people as you call them—that a Lady-Who-Has-Been-Long-Away—sends her love and is home again!"
"You're too slow with your invitation," called her father's voice from the doorway. "We've already arrived!" With a most curious merge of excitement and serenity Jaffrey Bretton and the Intruding Lady walked into the room.
"How do you do?" said Daphne, with the faintest possible tinge of formality.
"Why, very well indeed," said her father, a bit casually. "How's yourself?" His more immediate attention at the moment seemed fixed on Richard and the waving hair brush.
"Oh, I'm all right," drawled Daphne very evenly. Then, with all the sudden tempestuous intensity of a child, she threw her arms in the air. "Only, I don't see—even yet," she cried, "just what 234 Richard Wiltoner is doing here."
With a quite unexplainable laugh her father dropped down on the edge of her couch.