“We can’t, but we will,” Margaret murmured. “Of course, have Eleanor here. I wanted her with me but the family thought otherwise. They’ve been trying to send me away for my health, David.”
“Well, they shan’t. You’ll stay in New York for your health and come to my party.”
“Margaret’s health is merely a matter of Margaret’s 176 happiness anyhow. Her soul and her body are all one,” Gertrude said.
“Then cursed be he who brings anything but happiness to Margaret,” Peter said, to which sentiment David added a solemn “Amen.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Margaret said, shivering a little, “I feel as if some one were—were—”
“Trampling the violets on your grave,” Gertrude finished for her.
Christmas that year fell on a Monday, and Eleanor did not leave school till the Friday before the great day. Owing to the exigencies of the holiday season none of her guardians came to see her before the dinner party itself. Even David was busy with his mother—installed now for a few weeks in the hotel suite that would be her home until the opening of the season at Palm Beach—and had only a few hurried words with her. Mademoiselle, whom he had imported for the occasion, met her at the station and helped her to do her modest shopping which consisted chiefly of gifts for her beloved aunts and uncles. She had arranged these things lovingly at their plates, and fled to dress when they began to assemble for 177 the celebration. The girls were the first arrivals. Then Peter.
“How’s our child, David?” Gertrude asked. “I had a few minutes’ talk with her over the telephone and she seemed to be flourishing.”
“She is,” David answered. “She’s grown several feet since we last saw her. They’ve been giving scenes from Shakespeare at school and she’s been playing Juliet, it appears. She has had a fight with another girl about suffrage—I don’t know which side she was on, Beulah, I am merely giving you the facts as they came to me—and the other girl was so unpleasant about it that she has been visited by just retribution in the form of the mumps, and had to be sent home and quarantined.”
“Sounds a bit priggish,” Peter suggested.