“To live abroad somewhere. I suppose you know that my father and mother have separated.”
“Nonsense, Ollie,” Dorothy shouted back over her shoulder. “You know you don’t believe that! They always separate in the summer.”
“That’s true,” said her brother. “Dad always had to have a vacation from the family. He always took one whenever, as he used to say to us, ‘Your mother is growing too good to be true. I’ve got to have a rest.’ But other summers they have agreed to separate—peaceably—by collusion. This time father went off in a flaming huff. And I don’t think my mother is in a mood to ask him back again. Their relations have been severely strained.”
“Oliver,” I said, “you are your father over again for diabolical badinage. Cut it out, please. Tell me seriously what you are talking about.”
“I’m as serious,” he replied, “as a great horned owl. Dolly and I have reasoned earnestly with them both. But our parents are hard people to deal with on a rational basis. My mother has principles, you know; and it’s no use talking to people with principles. And my father, when he gets in a huff, is as obstinate as a mule.”
“Come now,” I urged with a little irritation, “is there anything in this, at all? What was the huff about?”
“Well—a huff, you know,” instructed the wise youth, “is just the kettle boiling over, after it has been heated a long time. I’m afraid it all goes back to my New Year’s scrape; but it goes back of that to other sins of mine—and maybe Dorothy’s—that father knew about and she didn’t; and it goes back of that to the big quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. Father is on the modern side—at least he wants to be. My mother is all for the good old ways. So, you see, there’s a fundamental incompatibility.”
“Yes,” I said, “I understand all that; but tell me about the huff.”
Oliver leaned forward and spoke in his sister’s ear. She nodded. Then he said:—
“Well, the fact is that he and mother hadn’t been hitting it off at all this spring. Dolly and I both noticed it months ago. We were all more or less strung up; and they got on each other’s nerves—noticeably. My mother is—well you know how my mother is, ordinarily.”