“Now you look angry,” he said; “but don’t be cross to-night. After to-morrow I shall not trouble you again for a long time, so you can well afford to be magnanimous.”
Paddy evidently agreed, for she took back her programme and only feigned a slight frown when she saw his name on four different lines.
Without meaning to be unkind, the thought, “perhaps it will vex Jack,” entered into her mind and stayed there.
And so the game at cross-purposes went on.
CHAPTER XIII
Paddy’s Views on Sentimentality.
When the music for the first dance commenced, General Adair led out Mrs Blake, and almost simultaneously Kathleen and Doreen with their partners, and Lawrence with Eileen followed suit. Paddy, however, waited breathless, to watch her father.
“I’m all on thorns,” she explained to her partner. “I simply can’t dance for a minute or two. Daddy’s clothes are too tight for him to laugh in with any safety, so goodness knows what will happen if he dances long!—I must warn him.”
She succeeded in getting within earshot, and at a loss for an appropriate warning, remarked in an audible whisper, with feigned anxiety: “Daddy—remember Lot’s wife,” which so tickled the old soldier that he nearly come to grief through her, instead of being saved from it.
“How well she looks to-night!” Mrs Blake said warmly, following Paddy with admiring eyes. “You must be very proud of your girls, General. One is beautiful, and the other full of originality and charm.”