“Well, don't say it again, then,” returned her sister. “Always is often enough. Well, in the L part Go on, mother! Don't ask where you were, when it's so exciting.”
“I don't care whether it's in the L part or not. There's plenty of room in the great barn of a place everywhere.”
“But what about his taking care of the business in Boston?” suggested Eunice, looking at her father.
“There's no hurry about that.”
“And about the excursion to aesthetic centres abroad?” Minnie added.
“That could be managed,” said her father, with the same ironical smile.
The mother and the girls went on wildly planning Dan's future for him. It was all in a strain of extravagant burlesque. But he could not take his part in it with his usual zest. He laughed and joked too, but at the bottom of his heart was an uneasy remembrance of the different future he had talked over with Mrs. Pasmer so confidently. But he said to himself buoyantly at last that it would come out all right. His mother would give in, or else Alice could reconcile her mother to whatever seemed really best.
He parted from his mother with fond gaiety. His sisters came out of the room with him.
“I'm perfectly sore with laughing,” said Minnie. “It seems like old times—doesn't it, Dan?—such a gale with mother.”