“It’s not,” she declared with emphasis. “When I find my own dear Dad’s company ‘dull’—I deserve to be branded as an ungrateful little brute! How can you think such a thing!”
His old eyes rested upon her sorrowfully.
“Ah, my dear! Times have changed!” he said. “In the old days ‘home’ was a happy abiding place for the young folk who honoured their old folk—but now, thanks to the stupid governments under which the people pay taxes and groan their lives away, ‘homes’ are broken up and old folk made mock of while the young are encouraged to run a wild life as they will, without faith in God or trust in any good save for themselves. You are not of these—I have brought you up differently—but it’s an ‘old-fashioned’ bringing-up, Sylvia!—and you are not a ‘modern’ minded girl. Perhaps you’ll thank me for that some day—perhaps not!—but I maintain that an ‘old fashion’ which built up the homes of the nation and taught the people to believe in God and live clean, loyal, loving lives, was a ‘fashion’ worth following. No ‘new’ fashion will ever equal or surpass it!”
CHAPTER XVI
NEXT morning came a brief note from the Philosopher,—he prided himself on never writing a word more than was absolutely necessary.
“Coming back to-morrow afternoon. Bringing a friend to tea.”
This, scrawled on what is called a “correspondence card” and signed with the almost illegible hieroglyph which he made of his initials, was all.
Dr. Maynard turned it over and over—then glanced at his daughter.
“This means that he will be here to-day,” he said. “Probably about four or five o’clock. I think the friend he alludes to is an Oxford publisher.”
“Yes?” queried Sylvia tentatively.