"Welcome home," he said, "dearest of sisters and most engaging insurgent of your restless sex!"
That night Stephanie seemed possessed of a gay demon of demonstrative mischief. She conversed with Jim so seriously about his authorship that at first he did not realize that he was an object of sarcastic and delighted malice. When he did comprehend that she was secretly laughing at him, he turned so red with surprise and indignation that his father and Stephanie gave way to helpless laughter. Seated there on the sofa, across the room, tense, smiling, triumphantly and delightfully dangerous, she blew an airy kiss at Jim:
"That will teach you to poke fun at me," she said. "You're no longer an object of fear and veneration just because you're writing a book!"
The young fellow laughed.
"I am easy," he admitted. "All authors are without honour in their own families. But wouldn't it surprise you, Steve, if the world took my book respectfully?"
"Not at all. That's one of the reasons I don't. The opinion of ordinary people does not concern me," she said with gay impudence, "and if your book is a best seller it ought to worry you, Jim."
"You don't think," he demanded sadly, "that there's anything in me?"
"Oh, Jim!"—swiftly remorseful—"I was joking, of course." And, seeing by his grin that he was, too, turned up her nose, regretting too late her hasty and warm-hearted remorse.
"How common, this fishing for praise and sympathy!" she remarked disdainfully. "Dad, does he bother you to death trying to read his immortal lines to you at inopportune moments?"
Cleland Senior, in his arm-chair, white-haired, deeply ruddy, had been laughing during the bantering passage at arms between the two he loved best on earth.