I agreed she never had. If Bettina transgressed (and I admit that this was seldom), she never did so outright. And she was not sly. She did not so much evade as avoid an inconvenient rule.
My mother remembered, no doubt, that any sin of deliberate disobedience was far more likely to be mine. "I suppose the child, not able to ask my permission, came to you."
Yes, she had consulted me.
"And you took it upon yourself——"
I sat there, in disgrace.
Presently: "Perhaps the Boynes have motored down. Or one of them."
I said I had no reason to think so. All the same, I couldn't help welcoming the suggestion. For the idea that the Boynes, "or one of them," might be there, seemed, oddly enough, to excuse Bettina in my mother's eyes. And she was moved to make me understand why I had been reproached. We had to be far more careful than most girls. I heard about the heavy responsibility of bringing up "girls without a father."
I wondered in what way our father's being here would have altered the events of this particular evening. And since he had been quoted to justify anxiety, I made bold to go to him for cheer. At times of stress before, I had invoked my father. Not often, and all-cautiously. And never yet in vain. That night I wondered aloud what were the kind of things our father would have done.
"His mere being here would make all the difference."
His mere name certainly did much. Once again I had cause to bless him for taking the chill out of the domestic atmosphere.