“Perhaps you will allow my experience to be the best judge,” he said, snappily. “In any case, I refuse my permission! The idea is ridiculous!—I do not think there is any more I need say, young man,” he concluded, making a movement to rise from his chair.
Maisie pinned him down to it, both arms around him, kneeling at his side, her face—Betty’s young face!—looking up to him in winsome appeal.
“Father!” she said, and her voice was full of soft cajolery, “if any one took Mother away from you, wouldn’t you feel it dreadfully?” He had a sudden little flitting vision of a crisis ten years back. “Would life be worth anything to you?—I mean it seriously.” She paused for a reply he refused to give. “Well, Father—that’s just what life will be like to Jim if you take me away from him!”
“I don’t see the necessity of the parallel,” he countered, feebly.
“Oh, yes, you do. And Father!—If any one took you away from Mother?—What would life be like to her?—You know! Just a dreary blank!—And that’s what my life will be like if you send Jim away from me!”
“But——” he began.
She put her hand over his mouth, a deliciously soft young hand, with a faint fragrance that reminded him——
“No!” she continued, inexorably. “Listen to me! I haven’t finished. If any one took you from Mother, and she knew where to find you—what would she do? You know! She would go to you, whatever was in the way!—And, Father, that’s what I should do!—Father!” she said, and her tone was full of solemn warning, “would you like to think of your darling little Maisie starving somewhere in a top back room—and hating you, hating you!” her voice suddenly became almost genuinely vicious, “because you wouldn’t give her husband a chance to earn his living? Would you like to sit day after day, not knowing where she was, wondering all sorts of things—with Mother sitting on the chair opposite and not daring to say a word—day after day, and year after year, and never hear from her any more?—And all because you were a stubborn, foolish old man who had forgotten what real love was!”
“But, Maisie——” he did not himself know what he was going to say.
She snuggled up close to him, looked up into his face.