"Oh yes."
Louie took the book.
She supposed she was awake now, but somehow a curious air of unreality enveiled whatever it was that was happening. She looked at the cover of the "Life" in her hand. The most execrable of woodcuts could hardly disguise what she saw. Traditionally posed, nude above the waist, and clad below only in tights and fighting-shoes—formidably watchful, lightly poised for the blow—in appearance at any rate he was a man and superb. But really he had been cruel, faithless, divorced.
As if she had passed merely from one state of half-wakefulness to another, she did not think of the bomb she was about to drop among the girls. She only wanted to look, and to look, and to look again at this man, who was her father.
"Isn't it just Causton's mouth and chin?" she barely heard Burnett Minor bubbling. "But I can't say she has Uncle Buck's beezer——"
Slowly Louie handed the "Life and Battles" back. At any rate she had now seen him, if only in a wretched woodcut. She looked quietly about her.
"That's my father," she said, perhaps a shade distinctly and loudly.
Then she looked about her again.
Burnett Minor jumped down from her chair. Her eyes shone flattery on Louie. The very audacity of such a lie compelled her admiration.
"O-o-oh—what a whopper!" she cried. Louie turned her eyes to Burnett Minor.