“What do you want?” Leslie inquired with sulky coolness.
“What are you doing here?” sternly countered her father.
“Nothing. You took away my job.”
“A good thing I did. I ordered you to stay in New York. Why are you not there? Why didn’t you obey me? You’re courting business college, it would seem.”
“Things are not always what they seem,” Leslie came back laconically.
The financier set his lips anew. It was either that or smile. Leslie was regarding him with the curiously unafraid expression which had most amused him in her as a child.
“Why can’t you behave properly?” he demanded with vexed displeasure.
“I don’t know. I have been trying to find that out for myself lately. It’s a hard job, Peter.” She purposely called him Peter. It had been another of her laughable childish mannerisms.
It brought a smile, reluctant and fleeting to his face. An odd light burned in his eyes for an instant. He turned his head to avoid her penetrating gaze. He had never before heard Leslie make an allusion to self-analysis. The knowledge that she had begun to try to fathom her forward motives was encouraging.
“What mischief have you done since you came up here?” he next asked. “Why could not you have cultivated Natalie instead of racing over the country up here in a car?”