“There! There, child! Of course I didn’t mean it.” The latter patted her shoulder soothingly. “But I wish he’d shed his Scotch mists, anywhere but in your ears.”
“Well—well, Andrew had nothing to do with this,” insisted Una, after a cooling minute. “I did hear it, that funny—piping—hum. The Quaker Ladies heard it, too—” her eyebrows arching merrily—“and they thought ’twas like the ringing and singing in harebells—”
“There now, Jack! There now!” Her father threw up his hands as he called his only daughter by the name, occasionally, thrust upon her by her girl chums, as a satire upon the “betty” element in her being so strong—on her being as far as possible removed from what might, possibly, be known as a “lassie-boy.” “There you are! You’re just steeped to the ears in these flower legends, very finespun and poetic—but too airy an atmosphere for a girl like you, with an imagination that ‘works overtime.’ Oh! I’m glad of your new interest in your flowers; it overcame your—”
“‘Sleepy fivvers,’” put in Una archly. “You used to say I was as lazy as the white Star of Bethlehem, Daddy dear, and she’s a perfect dormouse, garden dormouse—the little ‘ten o’ clock.’”
“But I—I’d like to see my little girl interested in something else, too, to keep her earth-fast.” Mr. Grosvenor laid his arm tenderly around the shoulders of his only child. “How—how about learning to run one of my big cars? How about becoming interested in radio, like your friend Pemrose? Oh-h! not in listening in on a concert. The laziest lubber-sprite could do that!” with a laugh. “But in riding the whirlwind and directing the storm,” gayly, “the jumble of noises coming through the air taking you by storm. I declare if you could once gossip familiarly of vacuum tube and variometer, current and condenser; if you could pick up one sentence—one word even—from the dot and dash with which the air is forever ticking, I might—”
“What! code. Telegraphy that—that horrid teaser!”
Una curled up like the finical Star of Bethlehem before the blinding beat of a thunder shower.
“I might,” Mr. Grosvenor went on, unheeding, swinging his eyeglasses judicially, “I might, even, decide that you were stern enough stuff, hot stuff enough, to go into camp with the other girls, this summer, and not infect them all with ‘peerie-weerie’ fears—fancies.”
“To camp!” It was a little diverted scream. “Oh! father, you know I’m dying to go—go with Pemrose.”
“Well! I’m beginning to think it might really be better for you than staying here under the care of a governess, while I—while I make a flying trip, business trip, to Europe—and your mother goes to bring me back,” with a shrug. “When do you start? What are your hiking plans?” The big man of affairs, banker, financier, turned to Pemrose.