“I was naughty, Dada!” she said. “But Freddy was going over to the Burtons’ tonight and I had told him I’d be there—that’s all. I wasn’t just crazy about going to the farm.”
She held a match for him, extinguished it with a flourish, and after lighting her own cigarette dropped down on the chaise longue with a weary little sigh. If she had remained standing or had sat down properly in a chair, his rôle as the stern, aggrieved parent would have been simpler. Leila was so confoundedly difficult, so completely what he wished she was not!
“About this Thomas——” he began.
“Oh, pshaw! Don’t you bother a little tiny bit about him. I’m just teasing him along.”
“I must say your talk over the telephone sounded pretty serious to me!”
“Oh, bunk! All the girls talk to men that way these days—it doesn’t mean anything!”
“What’s that? You say the words you used don’t mean anything?”
“Not a thing, Dada. If you’d tell a man you didn’t love him he’d be sure to think you did!”
“A dangerous idea, I should think.”
“Oh, no! Everything’s different from what it was when you were young!”