Bud dropped his hand in real dismay.
"Guess I plumb forgot. Wal, say, since you got to know, I'd say it must ha' bin right after din—I mean luncheon. You see, I'd——"
"Ah, say three o'clock." Nan leaned forward, her pretty face supported on the knuckles of her clasped hands, her elbows resting upon her knees. "Oh, Daddy—and you aren't due at the party till seven. Four hours. Four valuable hours sitting around in your dandy new suit of evening clothes. Vanity. Pure vanity. We're all the same, men who don't need—fixing, and women who do. Only you men won't admit it. Women do. They surely do. Any woman's ready to admit she'd rather look nicer than any other woman than be all sorts of a girl other ways. And though they don't ever reckon to admit it, men just feel that way, too. Oh, I guess I know. The boys are just yearning for the girls to think there's nothing but big 'thinks' moving around in their well-greased heads. And they'd hate a girl who got the notion they had time to stand around gawking in a mirror to see their clothes set right, or study the look they're going to pour into the china blue eyes of some tow-headed bundle who knows his bank wad down to the last cent."
She sighed heavily, but her eyes were literally dancing.
"But it's kind of nice that boys act that way," she went on. "It does give a girl a chance to think him all sorts of a god for—a while. Say, if she knew things just as they are, where'd she find that scrap of romance which makes life all sunshine and storm clouds, instead of the monotonous gray it really is?"
She pointed at the snowy bed laden with the precious costumes she must use before the night was out.
"Say, wouldn't it be just awful if every girl knew that the man she'd—marked down for her own, worried around with things like that before every party he was to take her to, same as she does? I guess she'll learn it all later when she marries him, and has two folks to worry for instead of one. But, meanwhile, she just dreams that he's dreaming those 'big thinks' that's going, some time, to set a dreaming world wide awake to the mighty 'thinks' she dreams into her beau's head."
Then she began to laugh, and the infection of it caught her father, who gurgled heavily in chorus.
"Say, wouldn't it be a real circus if a big, strong man had to act the same as us poor women? I mean when we're scheming to stir up a sensation in the hearts of men, and in the envy depot of other girls, when we enter the portals of a swell social gathering. Now Jeff. Say, my Daddy, can you see him sort of mincing across the floor," she cried, springing from her seat and pantomiming across the room, "smiling, and smirking and bowing, this way and that, all done up in fancy bows, and sheeny satins, and—and with combs in his sleek hair to hold it in place, and with a jeweled tiara set on top of it? And then—yes, just a teeny tiny touch of powder on his nose? My word!"
A happy chorus of laughter rang through the room as she returned to her seat, Bud's coming in great unrestrained gusts. They were like two irresponsible children rather than father and daughter.