“You little devil,” he said; “you’ll drown.”
“No, I won’t. Let go, Wally; I won’t be helped.”
He headed her for shore, by pretending to race her, and once on land he urged Miss Wilder to watch her every minute, lest she swim for the raft alone.
But this adventure had fixed Isabelle on her father’s mind. He thought about her a good deal, and laughed at the thought. She certainly was a sport, and she was nobody’s fool. He wondered if other children were like her, and began to watch them. He asked their fathers about them, but the fathers never knew. They always said: “I don’t see much of the kids; too busy,” or: “That’s Mabel’s job (or Kate’s or Mary’s).”
He could not seem to remember seeing much of his father when he was a boy, save on state occasions when his parent was called upon to administer extra stiff punishment. He wondered if the other mothers knew more about their youngsters than Max did about hers? But when he asked them at the club, or on the golf course, they looked surprised and said: “I don’t know anything about them, Wally; the governess looks after them.”
It evidently wasn’t the thing, in their set, to bother about children. So he did not get much help from his friends in the difficult situation in which Max had placed him. She stood by her determination to leave the child to him, with irritating completeness. She even refused to give advice or help.
Of course, he could leave well enough alone, let Miss Wilder blunder along with her somehow. That was evidently the way the rest of them did. He had almost decided upon this course, when he met Isabelle, standing on the pony’s bare back, making him run, while poor Miss Wilder panted behind, protesting at every step.
It brought him to a resolution. The kid ought to have a younger woman to look after her, one who could swim and ride and take some interest in her sports. If she was going to leap head first into every danger, she needed a girl to stand by, and leap in after her, if necessary.
It took him several days to get up his nerve to dismiss Miss Wilder, but in the end, she met him half way. She said she could not stand the strain, that she had aged ten years in the two months she had been in charge of his daughter.