"Yes, it's all right—now," said the girl, "unless of course——" Edging weakly forward to the front of the chair she clutched out gropingly for its cool, creaking straw arms and straightened up suddenly very stiff and tense. "Aren't you even going to ask me," she faltered, "what the boy was doing in my room—at night?"
"Oh, of course, I'm only human," admitted her father. Very leisurely as he spoke he stopped to light a fresh cigarette and stood for a moment blowing innumerable rings of smoke into space. "Only somehow—that's a matter," he smiled, "that I'd rather hear directly from the boy himself!"
"From the boy himself?" stammered the girl. With her slender, silken-shod limbs, the short skirt of the day, the simple blouse, the tousled hair, she looked for all the world like a 6 little child just jumping up to play. "Why—why he's here now!" she said.
"Here now?" cried her father. "Where?"
"Downstairs," said the girl. "We came on together."
"Came on together?" demanded her father. "From college, you mean? Two days and a night?"
"Yes," said the girl.
With a sharp intake of his breath that might have meant anything the man stepped suddenly forward.
Towering to her own little height the girl stood staunchly to meet him.
"Why you don't think for one single moment that—that it was fun, do you?" she questioned whitely. "You don't think for one single solitary little moment that I wanted him to come, do you? Or that there was anything very specially amusing for him in the coming?" Whiter and whiter the little face lifted. "It was only that he said I couldn't come alone to—to face whatever had to be faced. And if he came first he said it would seem like telling tales on me instead of on himself. So——"