He paused, staring at his sunken gardens as seen from Beatrice’s windows. Some men lazily raked new-cut grass and a peacock preened itself by the sundial. The glass conservatory showed signs of activity. The florists were at work for the coming event. Then he looked at his daughter, who waited with polite restraint until his reverie was ended.
“I’ve given you all she would have had,” he said, as if in debate with himself that this was the last rebuttal against possible criticism.
Beatrice glided over beside him; she looked out of the window, too, and then at her father. Something quite like tears was in his harsh eyes.
“Daddy,” she began with a quick indrawing of her breath, “do you think she’d have wanted me to have all––all this?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” he answered, taking her arm gently. He had always treated her with a formality amounting almost to awe.
“I don’t know––only I sometimes do almost think––would you suspect it? When I go to the office and watch those queerly dressed women bending over desks and earning a few dollars a week and having to live on it––and when I see how they manage to smile in spite of it––and how I waste and spend––and shed a great many tears––well, I wonder if it is quite safe to start as Steve and I are starting!” Then she threw her arms round him. “Steve won’t believe that I’ve been serious, will he? Now, daddy dear, please go ’way and let me dress, for I’m ’way late.”
She kissed him almost patronizingly and he tiptoed out of her room, rather glad to get into his own domain––the majestic library with its partially arranged wedding gifts.
“We’re doing ourselves proud,” he remarked to his sister, who had been rearranging them.
“What I told Beatrice this morning. Only she is all nerves. She can’t enjoy anything––it will be a relief to me, Mark, as well as a loss, when it is over.”