“You are obliged to give me a reason when you deny a young gentleman of good standing in this city our house. An unreasonable order like that reflects on my character or my judgment. I am the mistress of our home, as well as your daughter.”
“It’s making gossip,” he floundered, dimly feeling the unwisdom of quoting Pulaski Britt.
“Who is gossiping, and what is the gossip?” she insisted.
“I don’t care to go into the matter,” he declared, desperately. “If the young man is nothing to you except an acquaintance, and I have reasons of my own for not wanting him to call at my house, I expect you to do as I say, seeing that his exclusion will not mean any sacrifice for you.”
He was dealing craftily. She knew it, and resented it.
“I do not propose to sacrifice any of my friends for a whim, father. If your reasons have anything to do with my personal side of this matter, I must have them. If they are purely your own and do not concern me, I must consider them your whim, unless you convince me to the contrary, and I shall not be governed in my choice of friends. That may sound rebellious, but a father should not provoke a daughter to rebellion. You ought to know me too well for that.”
They were at the house, and he threw himself out of the phaeton and tramped in without reply. During their supper he preserved a resentful silence, and at the end went up-stairs to his den to think over the whole matter. It had suddenly assumed a seriousness that puzzled and frightened him. He had been routed in the first encounter. He resolved to make sure of his ground and his facts—and win.
Usually he did not notice who came or who went at his house. The still waters of his confidence in his daughter had never been troubled until the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had breathed upon them.
This evening, when he heard a caller announced, he tiptoed to the head of the stairs and listened.