“Yes, we fixed things pretty smartly that time,” pursued Félicia; “but he has played it awfully low down on us since, Maimie. I think it’s real mean of him to bring us along to this hotel, where there are only dowdy English people, and not let us go to the Continent at all, except that two days in Paris. And to have us decline all of those invitations that Lord Usk would have got us!”
“But he hasn’t been ugly, Fay, as he might have been. And when you think of some girls’ folks——”
“Oh, I know. Why, there’s Sadie van Zyl, in the smartest set here and the very toniest society everywhere—what she must suffer when she has to produce either her husband or her father! I don’t wonder she has a nerve-attack most times, and goes off to some cure or other.”
“Well, now, you need never feel badly like that, you know.”
“That’s so, but then I never have the chance of exhibiting pappa. I should admire to have him go with us to all sorts of places, but he won’t. Now, Maimie, if those Van Rensselaer girls knew just this, what would they say? Why, that there was some reason why he didn’t care to show himself in Europe. That may be so, or it may not; I don’t choose to inquire, but I incline to think that he settled in the States because he had taken a hand in some political game, and it didn’t eventuate just the way he hoped it would. Whatever the mystery was, your mother was in it, but not your father.” Maimie nodded. “Then we’ll take that as understood, and you’ll see I have to hoe my own row. Now Lord Usk is real nice to pappa, and from all we hear I don’t see but pappa will think his folks just lovely. So I’m on.”
“Wait, just wait!” entreated Maimie. “Don’t go ahead so fast.”
“Now, Maimie, you’re going to give up all of this foolishness—see? I’m watching out for an investment in real estate, and here’s Lord Usk just hungering to be developed. I shall have him run for Parliament—it’s quite a toney thing to do here—and then I’ll push him up step by step.”
“He’ll turn ugly,” prophesied Maimie. “He just loves the country——”
“Maimie Logan, are you going to tell me I don’t know how to fix things any way I want them? He will stay in town when I choose, and take me abroad when I choose, and go way down into the country when I let him. Say, Maimie, don’t yank all of my hair right out!”
“You are forgetting his folks. I don’t see but you’ll have trouble with them.”