Also, Aunt Belle has not answered my letter asking her to order the monogrammed stationery––four sizes, please, ashes of roses shade and lined with gold tissue. I also told Aunt Belle to see about relining my mink cape and muff. I shall wish to wear it very early in the season, and I want something in a smart striped effect with a pleated frill for the muff. And the little house for Monster completely 63 slipped my mind––Aunt Belle knows about it––with a wind-harp sort of thing at one side and funny pictures painted on the outside. I have changed my mind about the colour scheme for the breakfast nook––I am going to have light gray, almost a silver, and I would like some good pewter things.
It seems to me I shall never be rested. Steve wants to see every sunrise and explore every trail. We have met quite nice people and the dancing at the hotels is lovely. Oh, yes, if you need any help I know Miss Faithful will be glad to help, and Gaylord has ripping ideas.
Loads of love to you, dear papa. Your own
Bea.
Mary returned the letter without comment.
“Will you help me?” Constantine demanded almost piteously. “Belle’s out of the running, you know.”
“I’m cleaning my own house,” Mary began, looking at the surrounding disorder, “but I can run up to the apartment with you and see what must be done; though it seems to me–––”
“Seems to you what, young woman?”
“––that your daughter would prefer to do these at her leisure––they are so personal.”
Constantine moved uneasily in his chair. “I guess women don’t like to do things these days”––rather disgruntled in general––“but she might as well have asked an African medicine man as to ask me. What do I know about red lacquered cabinets and relining fur capes? I just pay for them.”
Mary smiled. Something about his gruff, merciless personality had always attracted her. She had sometimes suspected that the day would come when she would be sorry for him––just why she did not know. She had watched him from afar during the period of 64 being his assistant bookkeeper, and now, having risen with the fortunes of Steve O’Valley, she faced him on an almost equal footing––another queer quirk of American commerce.
She realized that his tense race after wealth had been in a sense his strange manner of grieving for his wife. But his absolute concentration along one line resulted in a lack of wisdom concerning all other lines. Though he could figure to the fraction of a dollar how to beat the game, play big-fish-swallow-little-fish and get away with it, he had no more judgment as to his daughter’s absurd self than Monster, who had gone on the honeymoon wrapped in a new silken blanket. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, as Mary had decided during her early days of running errands for nervous modistes who boxed her ears one moment and gave her a silk remnant the next. Neither can a man put all his powers of action into one channel, blinding himself to all else in the world, and expect to emerge well balanced and normal in his judgments.
As Mary agreed to help Constantine out of his débris of French clocks and pewter for the breakfast room she began to feel sorry for him even if he was a business pirate––for he had paid an extremely high price for the privilege of being made a fool of by his own child.