Something in the girl's face halted him at the very beginning of one of his tirades. Positively she was laughing at him?
"Is that the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?" Louise asked gently. "If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become self-supporting?"
"I'll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!" threatened I. Tapp.
"Why," murmured Louise, "then that will be the making of him, I have no doubt. It is the lack I have seen in his character from the beginning. Responsibility will make a man of him."
"Ha!" snarled I. Tapp. "How about you? Will you marry a poor man—a chap like my son who, if he ever makes twenty dollars a week, will be doing mighty well?"
"Oh! This is so—so sudden, Mr. Tapp!" murmured Louise, dimpling.
"You are not seriously asking me to marry your son, are you?"
"Asking you to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild gesture. "I forbid it! Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away from the scene of the festivities and did not appear again during the afternoon.
Mrs. Tapp, all of a flutter, appeared at Louise's elbow.
"Oh, dear, Miss Grayling! What did he say? He is so excitable."
She almost wept. "I hope he has said nothing to offend you?"
Louise looked at her with a rather pitying smile.