"No, don't you dare come near him!" sobbed Lydia. "Poor, dear Pa, always so generous and so good to us! I should think you'd be afraid, Martie—I should think you'd actually be afraid to talk so wickedly!"
She essayed an embrace of her father, but Malcolm shook her loose, and crossed the hall; they heard the study door slam. For a few minutes the sisters stared at each other, then Martie went to the side door, and called Teddy in as quiet a voice as she could command, and Lydia vanished kitchenward, with only one scared and reproachful look.
But the evening was not over. After Teddy was in bed, Martie, staring at herself in the mirror, suddenly came to a new decision. She ran down to the study, and entered informally.
"Pa!" She was on his knee, her arms about him. "I'm sorry I am such a problem—so little a comfort!—to you. Forgive me, Pa, for I always truly loved you—"
"If you truly want my forgiveness," he said stiffly, trying to dislodge the clinging young arms, "you know how to deserve it—"
The old phraseology, and the old odour of teeth and skin! Martie alone was changed.
"But forgive me, Pa, and I'll truly try never to cross you again." Reluctantly, he conceded a response to her kiss, and she sat on the arm of his chair, and played with the thin locks of his hair while she completed the peace. Then she went into the kitchen, where Lydia was sitting at the table, soaking circles of paper in brandy for the preservation of the glasses of jelly ranged before her.
"Lyd, I just went and told Pa that I was sorry that I am such a beast, and we've made it up—"
"I don't think you ought to talk as if it was just a quarrel," Lydia said. "If Pa was angry with you, he had good cause—"
"Darling, I know he did! But I couldn't bear to go to sleep with ill feeling between us, and so I came down, and apologized, and did the whole thing handsomely—"