Father was the first down. He came down whistling.
It is perfectly true. I could not beleive my ears.
He approached me with a smileing face.
“Well, Bab,” he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, “have you had a nice day?”
He had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of Fable.
“I’ve had a lovely day, Father,” I replied. I could be bacilisk-ish also.
There is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around until we both faced it.
“Up to my ears,” he said, referring to my heighth. “And Lovers already! Well, I daresay we must make up our minds to lose you.”
“I won’t be lost,” I declared, almost violently. “Of course, if you intend to shove me off your hands, to the first Idiot who comes along and pretends a lot of stuff, I——”
“My dear child!” said father, looking surprised. “Such an outburst! All I was trying to say, before your mother comes down, is that I—well, that I understand and that I shall not make my little girl unhappy by—er—by breaking her Heart.”