"Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's a shame to carry you off when you've just got here, but I'm going."
"Where's Billy?" Clarence asked stubbornly.
"Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly. And to her great relief Billy substantiated the statement by coming up to them, a little uneasy, as her stepmother was, over her father's appearance, yet confident that there was no real cause for a scene. To get him home as fast as possible, and let the trouble, whatever it might be, break there, was the thought in both their minds.
"Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly, aware of her husband's sulphurous gaze, but carefully ignoring it. "Then say day-day to Aunt Gertrude!"
"If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for me," Billy suggested.
"So that you can stay a little longer, eh?" said Clarence, in so ugly a tone and with so leering a look for his daughter that Rachael's heart for a moment failed her. "That's a very nice little plan, my dear, but, as it happens, I came over in the runabout! I'm a fool, you know," said Clarence sullenly. "I can be hoodwinked and deceived and made a fool of--oh, sure! But there's a limit! There's a limit," he said in stupid anger to his wife. "And if I say that I don't like certain friendships for my daughter, it means that _I_ DON'T LIKE CERTAIN FRIENDSHIPS FOR MY DAUGHTER, do you get me? That's clear enough, isn't it, Gertrude?"
"It's perfectly clear that you're acting like an idiot, Clancy," Mrs. Whittaker said briskly. "Nobody's trying to hoodwink you; it isn't being done this year! You've got an awful katzenjammer from the Stokes' dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for letting yourselves in for such a party. Now if you and Rachael want to go home in the runabout, I'll send Billy straight after you with Kenneth or Kent--"
"I'll take Billy home," Clarence said heavily.
By this time Rachael was so exquisitely conscious of watching eyes and listening ears, so agonized over the realization that the fuss Clarence Breckenridge made at the Whittakers' over Joe Pickering would be handed down, a precious tradition, over every tea and dinner table for weeks to come, so miserably aware that a dozen persons, at least, among the audience were finding in this scene welcome confirmation of all the odds and ends of gossip that were floating about concerning Billy, that she would have consented blindly to any arrangement that might terminate the episode.
It was not the first time that Clarence had made himself ridiculous and his family conspicuous when not quite himself. At almost every tea party and at every dance and dinner at least one of the guests similarly distinguished himself. Rachael knew that there would be no blame in her friends' minds, but she hated their laughter.