Ada looked at him in surprise.
“But I am miserable,” she said, “because mumma is ill; two trained nurses are not necessary for a nervous headache. What is the matter with my mother? What shock has she had? I have a right to know.”
It was her father’s turn to look at his daughter in surprise. Was this his mild, gentle Ada, whose very beauty suggested a weakness of character which her strong little chin contradicted.
“Who said she had had a shock?” he said nervously. “It is your duty to do what I tell you, and not to ask questions.”
“I have always asked questions, poppa, and have always had them answered. One of the nurses told me mother had had a shock.”
“Then I will tell her to hold her tongue. Now, do what I tell you; go to any ‘at home’ you have been asked to; get some friend to chaperone you, and laugh, and talk, and look your prettiest. You can do this for your father’s sake, surely.”
He looked at her angrily. Ada had never done anything because she loved her father. She had always feared and avoided him, and so the first bitter lesson of life this poor indulged girl had to learn was one of the cruellest of all and one which it takes an older and more expert hand to play—to wear a smiling face to hide an aching heart.
Marjorie and Sadie were so delighted to go for a drive with their pretty elegant sister in mumma’s big carriage that their tongues rattled on unceasingly.
“When I’m a big lady like mumma,” little Sadie said, “I’ll have four horses in my carriage, like that one over there, Ada,” and Sadie pointed to a fine four-in-hand coach driven by a well-known leader of New York fashionable world; “and I’ll buy lots of little babies of my very own, that I can wash and dress three or four times a day, but I won’t buy them a horrid cross poppa like our poppa, I’ll buy them a nice kind one, that plays with them, like Sissie Brown’s poppa. Why doesn’t mumma buy a new poppa, Ada?”
“Hush, dear,” Ada said; “you can’t buy poppas.”