"Poor old dad!" said Miss Emerson to Pendleton imperturbably. "He is telling the story of his life. Did you hear him?"
Pendleton shook his head.
"I was engaged otherwise," he replied, looking at her with a smile.
"Which is very good of you—but I'm not sensitive, I realize that every one knows what father is and was—it is not a secret that can be hid. He started with nothing, either socially or financially, and he has come up to where he is—wherever that is. I'm not ashamed of it, though I will admit I would rather have been born in, than have climbed in. But ours was an honest climb, so to speak. Society saw us climbing, and stood aside and permitted it. We bought our ladder, we bought the right to use it, and we bought our way up the wall and down again on the inside. He also bought my education and polish and helped me to make good. That is my duty—to make good. I've been aware of it for years—since I first began to make friends among the nice girls, indeed. And I'm trying to make good, Mr. Pendleton—I've been trying to make good ever since. It's the business of my life to make a social success, and, with father's fortune as an inheritance, to marry well.... You know it—every one knows it—so why dissemble? Moreover, it is a legitimate business for a woman, so why be ashamed?"
She said it in the most casual tones—as though she was commenting on the weather or the latest play. Why dissemble? Why be ashamed? Everyone knew it! There was something refreshing in her candor, in her frank appreciation of the situation, and in her acceptance of it as the immediate problem for her to solve, with but the one solution possible that would spell success. She understood that her entire education had been directed with that end in view, and if she did not attain it she would be a failure.
"There is nothing to be ashamed of," Pendleton assured her.
"Nevertheless you are wondering why I talk this way to you?" she went on. "And I don't know why myself—unless it is my father in me. He has a way, at times, of becoming intimately personal concerning his affairs," with a bit of a smile.
"Your father is a good fellow," said Pendleton, seizing the opportunity to shift the conversation.
"Father is dear!" she returned; "a dear, unselfish man—with me, at least. He may set mother on edge by fracturing the conventions, but it never bothers me. He has the inherent right to fracture them—and he does it very naturally!" she laughed. "I love him, and I'm not ashamed of him either."