OLD-DAD 
 
 BY 
 
 ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68 1 FIFTH AVENUE
 
 Copyright 1919, 
 By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Firtt Printing, Feb., 1919 
 
 Second Printing, Feb., 1919 
 
 Third Printing, Feb., 1919 
 
 Fourth Printing, Feb., 1919 
 
 Fifth Printing, Mar., 1919 
 
 Sixth Feinting, Mar., 1919 
 
 Seventh Printing, April, 1919 
 
 Eighth Printing, April, 1919 
 
 Printed in the United States af America
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I I 
 
 II 39 
 
 III 56 
 
 PART II 
 
 I . . 
 
 1 07 
 
 II . . 
 
 I4Q 
 
 Ill 
 
 224 
 
 2075597
 
 OLD-DAD
 
 PART I
 
 OLD-DAD 
 
 UNTIL Daphne Bretton s peremptory 
 departure from college she had 
 neither known nor liked her father 
 well enough to distinguish him with a nick 
 name. But on that momentous day in ques 
 tion, when blurting into the problematical 
 presence of an unfamiliar parent in an un 
 familiar room in an unfamiliar city she flung 
 her unhappy news across his book-cluttered 
 desk, the appellation slipped from her stark 
 lips as though it were the only fluid phrase 
 in a wooden-throated world. 
 
 "Old-Dad!" she said, "I have been ex 
 pelled from college!" 
 
 From under the incongruous thatch of his 
 snow-white hair her young father lifted his 
 extraordinarily young face with a snarl like 
 the snarl of a startled animal. 
 
 "Why Why Daphne!" he gasped. 
 "What?"
 
 2 OLD-DAD 
 
 With her small gloved hand fumbling 
 desperately at the great muffly collar of 
 her coat the young girl repeated her state 
 ment. 
 
 "I I have been expelled from college!" 
 she said. 
 
 "Yes, but Daphne! What for?" demanded 
 her father. His own face was suddenly as 
 white as hers, his lips as stark. "What for?" 
 he persisted. 
 
 Twice the young girl s lips opened and 
 shut in an utter agony of inarticulation. Then 
 quite sharply the blonde head lifted, the 
 shoulders squared, and the whole slender, 
 quivering little body braced itself to meet the 
 traditional blow of the traditional Avenger. 
 
 "For for having a boy in my room at 
 night," said the girl. 
 
 Before the dumb, abject misery in the 
 young blue eyes that lifted so heavily to his, 
 a grin like the painted grin on a sick clown s 
 face shot suddenly across the father s mobile 
 mouth. 
 
 "Oh I hope he was a nice boy!" he said 
 quite abruptly. "Blonde or brunette?" 
 
 "WhyWhyFather!" stammered the
 
 OLD-DAD 3 
 
 girl. "I I thought you would would kill 
 me!" 
 
 "Kill you?" mumbled her father. More 
 essentially at the moment he seemed con 
 cerned with an overturned bottle of ink that 
 was splashing its sinister pool across his morn 
 ing s work. "Kill you?" he repeated vaguely. 
 Across the high, intervening barrier of books 
 and catalogues he craned his neck suddenly 
 with a certain sharp intentness. 
 
 "And is your shoulder broken, too?" he 
 asked very gently. 
 
 "My shoulder?" quivered the girl. 
 
 "It sags so," murmured her father. 
 
 "It s my suit-case," said the girl. "My 
 heavy suit-case." 
 
 "Why not put it down?" asked the man. 
 
 Across the young girl s fluctuant face a 
 dozen new miseries flared hotly. 
 
 "I didn t just know whether you d want 
 me to put it down," she said. 
 
 "You ve come home, haven t you?" ques 
 tioned the man. "Home is supposed to be 
 where your father is, isn t it?" 
 
 "It never has been," said the girl quite 
 simply.
 
 4 OLD-DAD 
 
 Like a clash of swords the man s eyes smote 
 across the girl s and the girl s across the 
 man s. The ironic grin was still twisting 
 wryly at one corner of the man s mouth but 
 under the mocking fend of his narrowing eye 
 lids a glisten of tears showed suddenly. 
 
 "Oh Father," rallied the girl. "They 
 
 called me an evil name! They " With 
 
 a gesture of ultimate bewilderment and 
 despair she took a single step towards him. 
 "Oh, Father," she gasped. "What is it about 
 boys that makes it so wicked to have them 
 around?" And pitched over headlong in a 
 dead faint at his feet. 
 
 When blackness turned into whiteness 
 again she found herself lying limply in the 
 big Oxford chair before the fire with a slate- 
 colored hound sniffing rather interrogatively 
 at her finger-tips and the strange man whom 
 she had called "father" leaning casually with 
 one elbow on the mantel-piece while he stood 
 staring down at her through a great, sweet, 
 foggy blur of cigarette smoke. 
 
 "Wh what is the blue dog s name?" she 
 asked a bit vaguely. 
 
 "Creep-Mouse," said the man.
 
 OLD-DAD 5 
 
 "I m I m glad there s a dog," she whis 
 pered. 
 
 "So it s all right now, is it?" smiled the 
 man. The smile was all in his eyes now and 
 frankly mechanical still a faint flare of 
 mirth through a quizzical fretwork of 
 pain. 
 
 "Yes, it s all right now," said the girl, 
 "unless of course " Edging weakly forward 
 to the front of the chair she clutched out 
 gropingly for its cool, creaking straw arms 
 and straightened up suddenly very stiff and 
 tense. "Aren t you even going to ask me," 
 she faltered, "what the boy was doing in my 
 room at night?" 
 
 "Oh, of course, I m only human," admitted 
 her father. Very leisurely as he spoke he 
 stopped to light a fresh cigarette and stood 
 for a moment blowing innumerable rings of 
 smoke into space. "Only somehow that s a 
 matter," he smiled, "that I d rather hear 
 directly from the boy himself!" 
 
 "From the boy himself?" stammered the 
 girl. With her slender, silken-shod limbs, the 
 short skirt of the.day, the simple blouse, the 
 tousled hair, she looked for all the world like
 
 6 OLD-DAD 
 
 a little child just jumping up to play. "Why 
 why he s here now!" she said. 
 
 "Here now?" cried her father. "Where?" 
 
 "Downstairs," said the girl. "We came on 
 together." 
 
 "Came on together?" demanded her father. 
 "From college, you mean? Two days and a 
 night?" 
 
 "Yes," said the girl. 
 
 With a sharp intake of his breath that 
 might have meant anything the man stepped 
 suddenly forward. 
 
 Towering to her own little height the girl 
 stood staunchly to meet him. 
 
 "Why you don t think for one single mo 
 ment that that it was fun, do you?" she 
 questioned whitely. "You don t think for one 
 single solitary little moment that I wanted him 
 to come, do you? Or that there was anything 
 very specially amusing for him in the com 
 ing?" Whiter and whiter the little face 
 lifted. "It was only that he said I couldn t 
 come alone to to face whatever had to be 
 faced. And if he came first he said it would 
 seem like telling tales on me instead of on 
 himself. So "
 
 OLD-DAD 7 
 
 "Go and get him!" said her father quite 
 sharply. 
 
 With unquestioning obedience the girl 
 started for the door. Half way across the rug 
 she stopped and swung round squarely. 
 
 "He will say it was all his fault," she said. 
 "But it wasn t! I I sort of dared him to do 
 it!" 
 
 "Just a minute !" called her father. 
 
 "When you come back with him " 
 
 "Am I to come back with him?" protested 
 the girl. 
 
 "When you come back with him " re 
 peated her father, "if I ask him to be seated 
 you may leave the room at once at once, 
 you understand? But if I shouldn t ask him 
 to sit down " 
 
 "Then I am to stay and see it through?" 
 shivered the girl. 
 
 "Then you are to stay and see it through," 
 said her father. 
 
 With a little soft thud the door shut be 
 tween them. 
 
 When it opened again the man was still 
 standing by the fireplace blowing gray smoke 
 into space. With a casualness that savored
 
 8 OLD-DAD 
 
 almost of affectation he stopped to light an 
 other cigarette before glancing up half 
 askance to greet the hesitant footstep on the 
 threshold. 
 
 "Why, come in!" he ordered. 
 
 Without further parleying the two young 
 people appeared before him. 
 
 In the five minutes of her absence the 
 young girl seemed to have grown younger, 
 smaller, infinitely more broken even than her 
 father had remembered her. But almost any 
 girl would have looked unduly frail perhaps 
 before the superbly handsome and altogether 
 stalwart young athlete who loomed up so defi 
 nitely beside her. 
 
 As though his daughter suddenly had 
 ceased to exist the father s glance narrowed 
 sharply towards the boy s clean young figure 
 the eager, worried eyes the sensitive nos 
 tril the grimly resolute young mouth, and in 
 that glance a gasp that might have meant 
 anything slipped through his own lips. 
 
 "You re you re a keen looking lad!" he 
 said. "But I think I could lick you at tennis!" 
 
 "Sir?" faltered the boy. 
 
 Quizzically but not unkindly the man re-
 
 OLD-DAD 9 
 
 sumed his stare. "I don t think I happen to 
 have heard your name," he affirmed with 
 some abruptness. 
 
 "Wiltoner," said the boy. "Richard Wil- 
 toner." 
 
 "Sit down, Richard," said the man. 
 
 Like some tortured creature at bay the boy 
 turned sharply to the window and back to 
 wards the door again. 
 
 "No, I thank you, Sir!" he protested. "I 
 simply couldn t sit down!" Restively he 
 crossed to the bookcase and swung around 
 with a jerk to rake his impatient eyes across 
 the girl s lingering presence. "Maybe I ll 
 never sit down again!" he said. 
 
 "Nor eat?" drawled the older man. "Nor 
 -sleep?" 
 
 "Nor eat, nor sleep!" said the boy. 
 
 "Yes, that s just it," whispered the girl. 
 "That s just the way he was on the train 
 miles and miles it must have been from the 
 engine to the last car all the time I mean 
 night and day stalking up and down up 
 and down!" 
 
 "Little Stupid!" said her father. 
 
 "Who? I?" gasped the girl. For a sec-
 
 10 OLD-DAD 
 
 ond bewilderment she stared from the man s 
 face to the boy s. "O h!" she cried out in 
 sudden enlightenment. "You asked him to sit 
 down, didn t you?" And fled from the room. 
 
 With a shiver of relief the boy turned 
 squarely then to meet the man. The quiz 
 zically furrowed lines around the man s 
 mouth still held their faint ironic humor but 
 the boy s face in the full light showed 
 strangely stark. 
 
 "Well Lad," said the man very softly. 
 "What have you got to tell me about it?" 
 
 "Why that s just it!" cried the boy. "What 
 is there to tell except that I ve been a thought- 
 
 1 f*CC /"* 1 /*! _ 1 _ 
 
 JLWoo CclLl d 
 
 "How thoughtless?" said the man. 
 
 "And that your daughter isn t one bit to 
 blame!" persisted the boy. "Not one bit! 
 And for the rest of it - " he cried out des 
 perately. "What am I expected to say? 
 What ought I to say? For God s sake what 
 do you want me to say? Oh, of course, I ve 
 read yarns," he flushed. "French novels and 
 all that sort of thing, but when it comes down 
 to one s self and a and a girl you know - 
 Why what s the matter with everybody?"
 
 OLD-DAD 11 
 
 he demanded furiously. "A fellow isn t rot 
 ten just because he s a fellow! And it isn t 
 even as though I had wanted to be rotten but 
 wasn t! I never thought of being rotten!" 
 Hotter and hotter the red shame flared in his 
 face. "It s a nasty, dirty, evil-minded world !" 
 he stormed. "Why you d think to hear Miss 
 Merriwayne talk that " 
 
 "Miss who?" said the older man. 
 
 "Miss Merriwayne," said the boy. "Claudia 
 Merriwayne the president of the college, 
 you know." 
 
 "No, I didn t know," said the man. 
 
 "She s a fiend!" said the boy. "An utterly 
 
 merciless " In a hectic effort to regain 
 
 his self-control he bit the sentence in two and 
 began to repace the room. "There there 
 was a dance at the college that night," he 
 resumed at last with reasonable calmness. 
 
 "I don t go in much for that sort of 
 thing. I don t live in town, you see, but miles 
 and miles outside. I m just a farmer, you 
 know," he confided with his first faint ghost 
 of a smile. "My brother and I have a bit 
 of a ranch outside. We re trying very hard to 
 be scientific farmers. It s the deuce of a
 
 12 OLD-DAD 
 
 job! And whenever there comes a night that 
 I ve got pep enough to stay awake I d rather 
 ride somehow than fuss around with people. 
 Sometimes I ride all night! I ve got a horse 
 named Brainstorm! And he s some devil!" 
 In the instant s transfiguring glow he was all 
 young god again, superb, defiant. Then as 
 though with a spasm of pain his young mouth 
 tightened to a single determinate line. With 
 the air of one suddenly very tired he stopped 
 his restless pacing and backed into the sup 
 porting angle of the bookcase. 
 
 "But on this particular night that I was 
 telling you about," he resumed unhappily, "I 
 had a sort of a feeling somehow that I d like 
 to go to the dance. It isn t always easy, you 
 know," he confided with unexpected ingenu 
 ousness. "After the long day s work, I mean, 
 with your back broken and your arms 
 sprained, to come in and round up your own 
 hot tub and your own shaving things and 
 your own supper and the evening clothes you 
 haven t even seen for six months. And I for 
 got the supper," he smiled faintly. "We 
 haven t any woman at the house just now. 
 But after you get to the dance you don t
 
 OLD-DAD 13 
 
 mind!" he brightened transiently. "It s so 
 bright and sweet-smelling! So many lights 
 and colors! And so many funny dresses! 
 And the music certainly is bully! And then 
 all of a sudden at some silly hour like eleven 
 o clock everything shuts down and you have 
 to go home! Why you d only just come! 
 Just got into your step, I mean! Just met the 
 girls you wanted to meet! Just begun to 
 laugh! Just begun to fool! That s the 
 trouble with college parties," he frowned. 
 "They re so darn institutional! No hanging 
 round afterwards to forage in the kitchen 
 and help put the house to bed, no nice jolly 
 dawdling about on the front steps to look at 
 the moon, no funny, bumpy walk home 
 through a plowed field with a girl in high- 
 heeled shoes and a lace tidy over her head! 
 Just zip! Like that! Eleven o clock! 
 Everybody get out! All that fun and pretti- 
 ness and everything snuffed out like a sour 
 candle just because some old dame wants to 
 go to bed! It s too it s too abrupt!" said the 
 boy. 
 
 "So you felt?" prodded the man. 
 
 "Felt?" cried the boy. "Why at five min-
 
 14 OLD-DAD 
 
 utes of eleven I felt so fit I could have run 
 nine miles to help put out a fire. But at eleven 
 I was so mad I d have run twenty just to start 
 one!" 
 
 "So what did you do?" said the man. 
 
 "I swore I wouldn t go home," flushed 
 the boy, "until at least I d had something to 
 eat! You know what college feeds are, a 
 cent s worth of salad and the juice of one 
 cracker? Your daughter laughed. She 
 thought it was funny. Oh, what a pity, she 
 said, that you can t have the cold roast 
 chicken that s up in my room! Where is 
 your room? I asked. I was laughing too. 
 Oh, just round the corner in the next build 
 ing, she said. Trot along over with me and 
 if nobody s round I ll scoot upstairs and toss 
 it down to you! It was further than I 
 thought," said the boy. "And very nice. Just 
 a two-minute cut across the campus, but stars, 
 you know, and a crunch of snow, and the 
 funny fat shapes of the orchestra instruments 
 running for their train. And Lord but I 
 was hungry! But when we got to the dormi 
 tory there were too many people round, it 
 seemed, too many lights, too much passing,
 
 OLD-DAD 15 
 
 not a single shadow in the whole world ap 
 parently that was big enough to toss a roast 
 chicken into let alone hide my great hulking 
 shape. I just darsn t! said your daughter. 
 Somebody surely would see me, a matron 
 or a proctor or the night watchman or some 
 body! And all of a sudden," flushed the boy, 
 "it seemed to me so absolutely idiotic that 
 a girl who d never done any harm in her life 
 should be shut up in a place where she 
 couldn t even proffer food to a starving friend 
 or finish out a dance or do any other decent 
 normal thing just because some cranky old 
 dame had other ideas. Well, there s no old 
 dame who owns me! I said. So if you re 
 afraid to go get the chicken I ll come and 
 get it myself! Yes I can see you! 
 laughed your daughter. She was standing on 
 the step as she spoke and she had on some 
 thing very red and sort of cunning with a 
 hood all black fur around her face and as 
 she tilted up her chin to the light it looked as 
 though even her hair was laughing at you. 
 Well, I m coming! I laughed back. You 
 darsn t! she said. In an hour I was there! 
 Oh, of course, I know I oughtn t to have done
 
 16 OLD-DAD 
 
 it!" conceded the boy. "But upon my soul 
 I swear I didn t think anything about it ex 
 cept that it was putting something over on 
 some of those old dames! All this fuss about 
 it s being a girl s room never entered my head 
 for a moment I tell you! I ve always had 
 such an awful lot of girl cousins tumbling 
 around. And it was all so darned easy after 
 the moon went down! Such a nifty fire- 
 escape and the toughest sort of an old wisteria 
 vine and 
 
 "Was she expecting you?" asked the man. 
 
 "No, that was the trouble," flushed the 
 boy. "Maybe at first she had wondered a 
 bit if I d really have the nerve I don t know. 
 But by the time I d got there she d started 
 for bed. Was in her wrapper, I mean, with 
 her hair down. Bare feet, you know, and all 
 that sort of thing. And when I opened the 
 window and slipped in across the edge she 
 started to scream. Knew who I was all at 
 once and all that but the scream got started 
 first. And I knew, of course, that wouldn t 
 do, so I jumped and caught her in my arms 
 to try and smother it out. And the door 
 opened and in walked President Merri-
 
 OLD-DAD 17 
 
 wayne herself. I don t know what she was 
 doing there in that dormitory at that time of 
 night. It may have been just accident or 
 somebody may have overheard us fooling out 
 on the front steps the hour before I don t 
 know. It just happened that s all," said the 
 boy. "And there was an awful scene, of 
 course. Things said, I mean, that I shouldn t 
 have supposed a woman would say to a young 
 girl. And two or three teachers or proctors 
 came running in. And there was a faculty 
 meeting later of course. And somebody 
 blabbed to a chambermaid and the chamber 
 maid blabbed to somebody else. And a re 
 porter got hold of it and " 
 
 "And a reporter got hold of it?" said the 
 man. 
 
 "Yes," shivered the boy. 
 
 "Pictures?" asked the man. 
 
 "Yes," said the boy. 
 
 "Pretty horrid?" said the man. 
 
 "Very horrid," said the boy. 
 
 For an instant there seemed to be no 
 sound at all in the room except the sound 
 of flame sucking at the birch juices on the 
 hearth.
 
 18 OLD-DAD 
 
 Then the man looked up sharply from the 
 birch log to the boy s quivering face. 
 
 "Well was the roast chicken good?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "S ir?" stammered the boy. 
 
 "And so ?" prompted the man. 
 
 From the boy s lips a long shuddering sigh 
 escaped. "And so," said the boy, "I have 
 ruined your daughter s life." 
 
 "And what do you propose to do about it?" 
 asked the man. 
 
 With a quick squaring of his shoulders the 
 boy drew his fine young body to its full height. 
 
 "I propose to do whatever you want me 
 to do," he said. 
 
 "Such as what?" asked the man. 
 
 "Such as anything!" said the boy. Almost 
 imperceptibly his breath quickened. "Why, 
 when I came here just now," he cried, "I 
 came, of course, expecting to be stormed at, 
 to be cursed, to be insulted, to be told I was 
 a liar, to have everything I said or did 
 
 rammed down my throat again ! But you ? 
 
 All you ve done is just to listen to me! And 
 believe me! And laugh! It s as though I d 
 hurt you so much you were sorriest of all
 
 OLD-DAD 19 
 
 for me and were trying every darned way 
 you knew to keep me from going mad! It s 
 
 as though " From the sudden slight sag 
 
 of his shoulders he rallied again with a ges 
 ture of folded arms and finality. "I tell you 
 I want to do whatever you want me to do," 
 he repeated quite simply. 
 
 "Have you talked with anyone about 
 this?" asked the man. 
 
 "Just with my brother," said the boy. 
 
 "And what did he say?" asked the man. 
 
 "It s the brother who runs the farm with 
 me," explained the boy. "He s a cripple and 
 rather a bit nervous now and then, but he 
 reads an awful lot of books. Not just farm 
 books I mean not just scientific books, but 
 all sorts of " 
 
 "By which you are intending to imply," 
 interrupted the man, "that your brother s 
 opinion, even though nervous, may be con 
 sidered fairly sophisticated?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said the boy. "And we went 
 into it all very thoroughly. All the scandal 
 and notoriety of the expulsion, I mean, and 
 the fright and the mortification, and the silly 
 sap-headed mothers who won t let their
 
 20 OLD-DAD 
 
 daughters chum with your daughter any 
 more, and the old cats who all their lives long 
 will be pussy footing after her with whispers 
 and insinuations. It s the bill, of course, that 
 I can t ever pay. That s the beastliness of it! 
 But what I ve got, of course, I must give 
 towards it! This isn t just my opinion, you 
 understand?" he questioned a bit sharply. 
 "But it s my brother s, too! And it isn t just 
 my brother s either! It s mine!" 
 
 "And that opinion is ?" prompted the 
 
 man. 
 
 "I should like to ask your daughter to 
 marry me!" said the boy. 
 
 "I admit that that opinion is classical," 
 drawled the man. "Shall shall we consult 
 the lady?" 
 
 "Yes," said the boy. 
 
 "Suppose you go to the door and call her," 
 suggested the father. 
 
 An instant later the boy was on the thresh 
 old. With the hesitation of perplexity only 
 he peered first to the right and then to the left. 
 
 "Miss Bretton!" he called. 
 
 "Not even Daphne? " interpolated the 
 man.
 
 OLD-DAD 21 
 
 With a vague gesture of surprise the boy 
 swung back into the room. 
 
 "Why why I never even saw your 
 daughter," he said, "until the night of the 
 dance!" 
 
 "What?" cried the man. 
 
 Before the interrogative exclamation could 
 even be acknowledged Daphne herself ap 
 peared upon the scene. 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Wiltoner?" she faltered. 
 
 "Mr. Wiltoner," said her father quite 
 abruptly, "has just made you an offer of mar 
 riage." 
 
 "A what?" gasped the girl. 
 
 "Mr. Wiltoner I would say," drawled her 
 father, "has just done himself the honor of 
 asking your hand in marriage." 
 
 "What?" repeated the girl, her voice like 
 a smothered scream. 
 
 "And he s quite poor, I judge," said her 
 father, "with all his own way to make in the 
 world and a crippled brother besides. And 
 whoever marries him now will have the devil 
 of a time pitching in neck and neck to help 
 him run his farm. Have to carry wood, I 
 mean, and water, and help plow and help
 
 22 OLD-DAD 
 
 scrub and help kill pigs and help wrangle 
 with the crippled brother and " 
 
 "What?" gasped the girl. 
 
 "Oh, of course, I admit it s very old- 
 fashioned," murmured her father, "very 
 quixotic very absurd and altogether what 
 any decent lad would do under the circum 
 stances. And you, of course, will refuse him 
 to the full satisfaction of your own thoroughly 
 modern sense of chivalry and self-respect 
 
 Nevertheless " From the half-mocking 
 
 raillery of the older man s eyes a sudden 
 glance wistful as a caress shot down across 
 the boy s sensitive face and superb young 
 figure. "Nevertheless," he readdressed his 
 daughter almost harshly, "I would to God 
 that you were old-fashioned enough to faint 
 on his neck and accept him!" 
 
 "Why why Father!" stammered the girl. 
 "I m engaged to the to the English professor 
 at college!" 
 
 Above the faint flare of a fresh cigarette 
 the man s ironic smile broke suddenly again 
 through shrewdly narrowed eyes. 
 
 " Are? Or were? " he asked. " Yet, 
 you mean? Still? "
 
 OLD-DAD 23 
 
 "Oh, of cpurse, I know I can t marry any 
 one now," quivered the girl. "Everything s 
 over everything s smashed. It s only that 
 that " 
 
 With the hand that had just tossed away 
 a half-burnt match her father reached out a 
 bit abruptly to clasp the boy s fingers. 
 
 "You hear, Richard?" he asked. "Your 
 offer, it seems, is rejected! So the incident is 
 closed, my boy with honor to all and malice 
 towards none I Completely closed!" he ad 
 jured with a certain finality. "And the little 
 
 lady " he bowed to his daughter, "suffers 
 
 no more fear nor ever will, I trust, while 
 her life remains in my keeping." From his 
 pocket he snatched a card suddenly, scribbled 
 a line on it, and handed it to the boy. 
 "I m going South to-morrow," he smiled. 
 "Daphne and I. To be gone rather indefi 
 nitely I imagine. About January send me a 
 line! About your own luck, you know, that 
 farm of yours and everything! It s very in 
 teresting!" With faintly forked eyebrows he 
 turned to watch the precipitated parting be 
 tween the boy and girl a slender, quivering 
 hand stealing limply into a clasp that wrung
 
 24 OLD-DAD 
 
 it like a torture, blue eyes still baffled with 
 perplexity lifting heavily to black eyes as 
 quick as a bared nerve. "Good-bye!" said 
 the man quite trenchantly. 
 
 "Good-bye," choked the girl. 
 
 "Good-bye!" snapped the boy. 
 
 Then the man and his daughter stood alone 
 again. 
 
 "There s a bath-room down the hall!" said 
 the man. "And my own room is just beyond. 
 Take a tub! Take a nap. Take something! 
 I ve got a letter to write and don t want any 
 one around!" 
 
 It was quite evident also that he didn t 
 want any things around, either. The instant 
 his daughter had left him he turned with a 
 single impetuous gesture and swept all the 
 books and papers from his desk. It might 
 have been the tantrumous impulse of a child, 
 or the unconscious urge of the spirit towards 
 unhampered elbow room. 
 
 Certainly there was neither childishness not! 
 spirituality in the plain businesslike paper 
 and strong, blunt handwriting that went to the 
 composition of the letter. An almost breath 
 less immediacy seemed also a distinctly ao
 
 OLD-DAD 25 
 
 tuating factor in the task. As fast ever as 
 hand could reach pen and pen could reach 
 ink and ink could reach paper again the 
 writer drove to his mark. 
 
 To Miss Claudia Merriwayne, 
 
 President, College (said the 
 
 letter). 
 
 So it is you, dear Clytie Merriwayne, who 
 have so peremptorily thus become the arbi 
 trator of my family fame and fortunes? 
 
 God Almighty! How Time flies! You, 
 old enough to have a college. And I, old 
 enough to have a daughter expelled from the 
 same! Why did you do it, Clytie? Not have 
 a college, I mean, but expel my daughter? 
 Truly she seems to me like rather a nice little 
 kid. And now I suppose in the cackle and 
 comment of all concerned she stands forth 
 "ruined" before the world. Yet when all s 
 said and done, Clytie Merriwayne, who did 
 the "ruining?" Not the little girl certainly. 
 Most emphatically not that splendid boy! 
 Who else then except yourself? Personally 
 it would seem to me somehow at the moment 
 as though you had bungled your college just
 
 26 OLD-DAD 
 
 about as badly as I have bungled my daughter. 
 My only conceivable excuse is that I ve been 
 a damned Ignoramus! What s yours? 
 
 Here I had a fine, frank, clean, prankish 
 little girl who didn t know a man from a 
 woman, and you have changed her into a 
 cowering, tortured, and altogether bewildered 
 young recreant who never again, as long as 
 time lasts, perhaps, will ever be able to tell 
 a saint from a devil, or a lark from a lust, 
 or a college president from any other traducer 
 of youth and innocence. Yet you are con 
 sidered to be something of a Specialist in 
 girls, I should suppose. As well as once hav 
 ing been a girl yourself. 
 
 How ever did you happen to do it, I say? 
 How ever in the world did you happen to 
 do it? 
 
 "For discipline," of course you will most 
 instantly affirm. "A necessary if drastic ex 
 ample to all the young lives in your charge. 
 Youth being," as you will undoubtedly em 
 phasize, "the formative period of character." 
 It certainly is, Clytie! The simplest garden 
 catalogue will tell you the same. Young 
 things grow on the morning sun! That s the
 
 OLD-DAD 27 
 
 phrase everywhere. But don t ever forget, 
 Clytie, that they blight just as easily on that 
 selfsame sun! And if you have blighted my 
 little girl instead of grown her I shall not 
 easily forgive you. 
 
 "What?" I can hear you demand in hectic 
 righteousness. "Do I claim for one minute 
 that my little daughter has committed a 
 Propriety instead of an Impropriety?" (Oh, 
 Clytie, haven t you learned even yet that 
 Youth is almost never proper but, oh, so sel 
 dom vicious?) Admitting perfectly frankly 
 to all the world that my daughter has com 
 mitted a very grave Impropriety I must still 
 contend that she has by no means committed 
 a Viciousness! And even God Almighty, 
 that shrewdest of Accountants, exacts such 
 little toll for Improprieties. It s these shark- 
 ish overhead charges of middlemen like you 
 that strain Youth s reputational resources so. 
 
 Far be it from me, alas, to deny that there 
 undoubtedly is a hideous amount of evil in 
 the world. But more and more I stand aston 
 ished before the extraordinarily small amount 
 of it that smoulders in young people s bodies 
 compared with the undue proportion of it
 
 28 OLD-DAD 
 
 that flames so frankly in older people s minds! 
 In this case in point for instance, it s your 
 whole moral premises that are wrong! It 
 isn t just that the boy wouldn t have hurt her 
 if he could. But that he couldn t have hurt 
 her if he would! Both equally "pure in 
 heart!" Both romping equally impishly 
 through a moment s impulsive adventure! 
 My God! I d hate to be the first evil thought 
 that had ever butted into a youngster s mind ! 
 
 But enough! What you need in your col 
 lege, perhaps, is a little less French and a 
 little more Biology! Quite a bit more mercy 
 certainly! This setting steel- traps for Vice 
 and catching Innocence instead is getting to 
 be an altogether too common human experi 
 ence. And some of us who have watched the 
 writhings of an accidentally incarcerated 
 household pet have decided long since that 
 even a varmint doesn t quite deserve a steel 
 trap! 
 
 But all this, Clytie, being neither here nor 
 there, I come now to the real point of my 
 letter which is to ask a favor. 
 
 My little daughter is pretty sick, Clytie 
 sick mentally, I mean sex-scared, socially
 
 OLD DAD 29 
 
 and emotionally disorganized. On the par 
 ticular trip I am planning for the winter into 
 the more or less primitive and lawless wild- 
 lands of the far South I am hoping that she 
 will find plentiful opportunity to reconstruct 
 her courage from the inherent principles 
 alone of Right and Wrong. But failing this 
 hope by the time the Northern summer is 
 
 due ? 
 
 Have you no memories, Clytie, of another 
 college room? And another indiscretion? 
 Which beginning soberly with a most worthy 
 desire to exchange Philosophy note books 
 ended if my memory serves right with a 
 certain amount of kissing. Yet will you con 
 tend for one single instant, Clytie, that your 
 thoughts that night were one whit less clean 
 than my daughter s? That there were four 
 "improper" youngsters in that episode, instead 
 of two as now, does not greatly in my mind 
 refute the similarity. Nor the fortuitous 
 chance by which one boy had just vanished 
 over the window-sill and you into another 
 room when that blow fell ! Do you remember 
 the things that were said then, Clytie Merri- 
 wayne? To your room-mate, I mean? Poor
 
 30 OLD-DAD 
 
 little frightened baby! Seventeen, wasn t 
 she? And cut her throat at dawn rather than 
 meet what had to be met? Pretty little 
 white throat it was too as I remember it. 
 With a rather specially tender and lilting 
 little contralto voice that would have been 
 singing lullabys in another four or five years. 
 And the boy? The boy who was caught, I 
 mean? Not a bad sort at all! Was rather 
 intending to make something fairly decent of 
 himself up to then! But after the blood- 
 red things the girl s father and mother said 
 to him? He went a bit "batty" after that, 
 some people said! A bit wild anyway! 
 Eighteen or nineteen he must have been? 
 Oh, ye gods, what a waste! Babies all! And 
 to make them suffer so! Just by the thickness 
 of a door you escaped it, Clytie! Just by the 
 
 whish of a skirt! Except for that ? 
 
 Well this is the favor, Clytie. If by Sum 
 mer my little girl is still staggering under 
 the nervous and moral burden of feeling 
 herself the only "improper" person in the 
 world, I shall ask your permission to tell her 
 the incident here noted, assuring you of course 
 in all fairness and decency if I am any judge
 
 OLD-DAD 31 
 
 of young character that she will never tell 
 on you as you have told on her! 
 
 As for the rest if I have written over-gar- 
 rulously I crave your pardon. This turning 
 the hands of the clock backwards is slower 
 work than turning them ahead. 
 
 For old time s sake believe me at least 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 JAFFREY BRETTON. 
 
 With a sigh of relief then he rose from his 
 desk, lit another cigarette, and started down 
 the hall, with Creep-Mouse, the blue hound, 
 skulking close behind him. 
 
 As he crossed the threshold of his own room 
 and glanced incidentally towards his bed a 
 gasp of purely optical astonishment escaped 
 him. All hunched up in a pale blue puffy- 
 quilt his lovely little daughter lay ensconced 
 among his snow-white pillows. Across her 
 knees innumerable sheets of paper fluttered. 
 Close at her elbow a discarded box of pencils 
 lay tossed like a handful of jack-straws. And 
 the great blue eyes that peered out at him 
 from the cloud of bright gold hair were all 
 brimmed up again with terror and tears.
 
 32 OLD-DAD 
 
 "I m I m writing to John," she said. 
 
 "John?" queried her father. 
 
 "Why yes, the English professor at 
 college, don t you remember?" faltered the 
 girl. "Don t don t you want to know about 
 John?" 
 
 "No, I don t!" said the man. "There s 
 nothing important about John that John 
 won t have a chance to show for himself 
 in this immediate situation." 
 
 "Isn t it isn t it Hell?" quivered the 
 girl. 
 
 "N o o," said her father. "I shouldn t 
 consider it just Hell. But I admit it s some 
 thing of a poser for a man in John s posi 
 tion. He s one of the faculty of course?" 
 
 "Yes," said the girl. 
 
 "And was at the faculty meeting presum 
 ably when " 
 
 "Yes," said the girl. 
 
 "Was your engagement announced?" 
 asked her father quite abruptly. "Generally 
 known, I mean, among the girls?" 
 
 "No not exactly," said the girl. 
 
 "U m m," said her father. From his 
 Wordless stare at the wall he glanced down a
 
 OLD-DAD 33 
 
 bit sharply at the wan little face before him. 
 "Heard from him yet?" he demanded. 
 
 "No, not yet," said the girl. "Why he 
 doesn t know where I am! Nobody knows 
 where I am, I tell you! I just ran away, I tell 
 
 you! I didn t even wait to pack! I I 
 
 But, of course, I will hear!" she asserted 
 passionately. "I will! I will! It isn t that 
 I expect to to marry him now," she ex 
 plained piteously. "Nobody of course 
 would want to marry me now. It s only 
 that- 
 
 Before the sudden rush of color to her face 
 her father gave a little startled gasp. 
 
 "Hanged if you re not pretty!" he said. 
 "Shockingly pretty!" With an almost amused 
 interest his eyes swept down across the ex 
 quisite little face and figure all muffled up 
 to the tips of its ears in the great blue puffy- 
 quilt against the snow-white pillows. "Truly 
 when I came in here just now," he laughed, 
 "I thought a magazine-cover had come to life 
 on my bed!" With the laughter still on his 
 lips all the mischief went suddenly out of 
 his eyes. "You heard what I said just now 
 about going South to-morrow?" he asked a
 
 34 OLD-DAD 
 
 bit trenchantly. "I m sorry if it seems per 
 emptory. But my plans have been made for 
 some time. I had intended to take only 
 Creep-Mouse with me." 
 
 "Creep-Mouse?" questioned the girl. 
 
 "Oh, of course, there are a dozen other 
 dogs up country that I could choose from," 
 reflected her father with a somewhat frown 
 ing introspection. "But when it comes to 
 traveling about and putting up with things, 
 Creep-Mouse alone combines the essential 
 characteristics of an undauntable disposition 
 with folding legs." 
 
 "Oh, of course, I can t speak too positively 
 about my undauntable disposition, " rallied 
 the girl with the faintest possible smile, "but 
 I certainly will try to take the hint about the 
 folding legs. " 
 
 "Hint?" snapped her father. "Oh, it 
 wasn t so much the adaptability business I 
 was thinking about as it was about the dog!" 
 With a gesture almost embarrassed he reached 
 down suddenly and drew the hound s plushy 
 ear through his fingers. "Oh, hang it all, 
 Daphne!" he resumed quite abruptly, "you 
 and I might easily not like the same opera
 
 OLD-DAD 35 
 
 or the same hors-d oeuvre but I d hate any 
 one round who didn t like the same dog." 
 
 "I adore Creep-Mouse!" said Daphne. 
 
 "Truly?" quizzed her father. 
 
 "Truly!" twinkled Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, all right then," said her father, "I 
 guess we understand each other!" 
 
 "Perfectly," nodded Daphne. 
 
 "For all time," said her father. 
 
 "All time," acquiesced Daphne. 
 
 With his watch in his hand and his dark 
 eyes narrowed to some unspoken thought he 
 thrust out his last admonishment to her. 
 
 "Then take all the brace there is !" he said, 
 "and hustle out and get some new clothes! 
 It s quite lucky on the whole, I imagine, that 
 you didn t have time to pack up any of your 
 college things for you certainly won t need 
 anything academic in the place we re head 
 ing for! It s not any South that you ve ever 
 heard of that we re going to, you under 
 stand?" he explained with the faintest pos 
 sible tint of edginess in his tone. "No Palm 
 Beaches! No pink sash-ribbons! No tennis! 
 No velvet golf courses! No airy fairy 
 anythings ! But a South below the South ! A
 
 36 OLD-DAD 
 
 South all heat and glare and sweat and jet- 
 greens jungles! Tropics and slime! Rough! 
 Tough ! Pretty nasty some of the time. Vio 
 lently beautiful almost always! And we re 
 going down to hunt!" he added with certain 
 decisiveness. "And to fish/ And to study citrus 
 fruits when there s nothing else to do ! And 
 you might just as well know it now as 
 later," he resumed with all his old insouci 
 ance. "I am also going to find me a wife 
 if such a thing is humanly possible." 
 
 "A wife?" gasped the girl. "Oh, this 
 this eternal marrying business !" she shivered. 
 "If it s all so dreadful, about men, I mean, 
 why do women keep marrying? What s the 
 righteousness of it? What s the decency? 
 What s it all about?" 
 
 "Don t forget that I m one of these dread 
 ful men, " smiled her father. 
 
 "Yes I know," quivered the girl. 
 
 "But " Like a butterfly slipping out of 
 
 its cocoon one shoulder slipped lacy-white 
 from the blue puffy-quilt. "What about my 
 own mother?" she demanded. 
 
 "Your mother has been dead for fifteen 
 years," said the man,
 
 OLD-DAD 37 
 
 "Yes but Father," persisted the girl. 
 
 With folded arms the man stood watching 
 her bright young color wax and wane again. 
 
 "If there s anything you want to ask," 
 he suggested, "maybe you d better ask it now 
 and get it over with." 
 
 "Oh, I didn t want to be inquisitive," stam 
 mered the girl. "It s only that that servants 
 and relatives talk so and I know so little. 
 You you and mother didn t live together, did 
 you?" she questioned quite abruptly. 
 
 "No," said the man. 
 
 "You you mean there was trouble?" 
 flushed the girl. 
 
 "There was some trouble," said the man. 
 
 "You mean that you didn t like her?" 
 probed the merciless little voice. 
 
 "No I didn t like her," said the man 
 without a flicker of expression. 
 
 Clutching the blue quilt about her the girl 
 jumped to the floor and ran swiftly to him. 
 
 "Oh, Father!" she cried. "Whatever in the 
 world will I do if you don t like me?" 
 
 "But I do like you!" smiled her father. 
 Shy as a boy he reached out and touched her 
 sunny hair. "Only one condition!" he rallied
 
 38 OLD-DAD 
 
 with sudden and unaffected sternness. "When 
 you broke into my study just now you called 
 me Old-Dad! Up to that moment I had 
 considered myself some young buck. 
 Never again as long as you live I warn you 
 ever call me anything except Old-Dad! 
 Darned if it isn t sobering!"
 
 II 
 
 THE scene that Daphne had left be 
 hind her two thousand miles or 
 more, though more academic of 
 course, was none the less poignant to the one 
 most concerned. 
 
 Deflected by a more or less erudite lecture- 
 obligation to a town at least gossip-distance 
 away, no faintest rumor of any college chaos 
 whatsoever had reached John Burnarde s 
 ears till the evening after the dance, when 
 just recrossing the well-worn threshold of his 
 beautiful, austere study, the shrill harsh 
 clang of his telephone bell rang down the 
 curtain on what had been the most exquisitely 
 perfect episode of even his fastidious life. 
 
 Yet even then no whisper prepared him for 
 what the alarm was all about. Poor John 
 Burnarde! 
 
 Whatever else an academic training may 
 teach an undergraduate it has certainly never 
 taught a member of the faculty what to do 
 when summoned post-haste to the President s 
 
 39
 
 40 OLD-DAD 
 
 office to consult with various other members 
 of the faculty on what has been pronounced 
 "a most flagrant breach of moral as well as 
 of academic standards" he finds the case to 
 be the exceedingly delicate one of a girl- 
 student caught entertaining a man in her 
 room late at night, and the girl herself 
 his fiancee! 
 
 That the betrothal at that moment was 
 known only to himself and the girl gave John 
 Burnarde the last long breath, he felt, that 
 he should ever draw again. 
 
 Still a bit flushed, a bit breezy, with his 
 brisk sprint across the chill November 
 campus, he was just slipping out of his over 
 coat in the doorway of the President s office 
 when the name "Daphne Bretton" first struck 
 across his startled senses. Half hampered by 
 a balky overshoe, half pinioned by a ripped 
 sleeve-lining he thrust his head alone into the 
 conference. 
 
 "What?" he demanded. 
 
 "This will hit Burnarde rather roughly, 
 I m afraid," whispered the History Man to 
 the Biology Woman. "She s quite his star 
 English pupil, I imagine. Has done one
 
 OLD-DAD 41 
 
 little bit of lyric verse already, they say, that 
 is really rather remarkable. Very young of 
 course, very ingenuous, but quite remarkably 
 knowing." 
 
 "Maybe now we can guess where she gets 
 her knowingness, " murmured the new Bible 
 Instructor behind her pure white ringers. 
 
 "What?" demanded John Burnarde all 
 over again. The winter wind seemed to have 
 faded oddly from one cheek but was still 
 spotting hecticly in the other. "What?" he 
 persisted bewilderedly, still struggling with 
 his overshoes. 
 
 "Why it s the Bretton girl!" prompted a 
 sharp voice from some dark seat in the 
 corner. 
 
 "That pretty little Bretton girl," regretted 
 a gentler tone. 
 
 "Yes I I know who you mean," stam 
 mered Burnarde. "But but " 
 
 "Always made me think of apple-blossoms 
 somehow," confided the old Mathematics 
 professor a bit surreptitiously. 
 
 "Apple-blossoms?" mumbled poor Burn 
 arde. 
 
 "So sort of pink and white and fresh and
 
 42 OLD-DAD 
 
 and fragrant. Pon my soul when she 
 comes into my class and takes a front seat it 
 makes me feel a little queer. It s like being 
 a boy again! Young grass, May morning, and 
 a wind through the apple orchard! Fra- 
 grancy? Yes, that s it!" 
 
 "Yes, it s just exactly the flagrancy of it 
 that makes the scandal so complete!" inter 
 posed the President s keenly incisive feminine 
 voice. 
 
 Instantly every eye except Burnarde s re 
 verted to the unquestionable dominance of the 
 President s ash-blond personality. 
 
 Burnarde alone, looming lean, keen, tense, 
 on the edge of the group, with five genera 
 tions of poise and reticence masking the 
 precipitant horror in his mind, stood staring 
 blankly from one face to another of his 
 cruder-birthed associates. 
 
 "I protest!" he said. 
 
 "Protest?" questioned the President s coolly 
 inflected voice. "Protest what?" With a 
 graceful if somewhat studied gesture of pa 
 tience Miss Claudia Merriwayne laid down 
 her jotting pencil and narrowed her cold 
 gray eyes to the eyes of her youngest pro-
 
 OLD-DAD 43 
 
 fessor. "You were a little late getting here 
 I think, Mr. Burnarde," she admonished him 
 perfectly courteously, "but the general cir 
 cumstances of the case you have gleaned quite 
 sufficiently, I think, even in this last brief 
 moment or so? Surely in a case so so dis 
 tressing," she flushed, "it will not be neces 
 sary for us to to revive the details in all 
 their entirety? In the half hour that we have 
 
 been discussing the matter . It is a half 
 
 hour, isn t it?" she turned sharply and asked 
 of her nearest neighbor. 
 
 "Fully a half hour!" gloated the nearest 
 neighbor. 
 
 "Miss Bretton, of course, will have to leave 
 college," resumed the President succinctly. 
 "Definitely positive expulsion is, of course, 
 the only path open to us!" 
 
 "I protest!" said John Burnarde. 
 
 From some half-shadowed corner directly 
 in front of him a distinctly Continental smile 
 flared up on a French instructor s face. 
 Close at his elbow the phrase "little sly, pink- 
 faced minx" hissed plainly from one gossip 
 to another. The blood was surging in his 
 ears! His heart was pounding like an en-
 
 44 OLD-DAD 
 
 gine! Shock, bewilderment, nausea itself, 
 racked chaotically through all his senses! 
 Yet neither love nor loyalty, a girl s honor 
 or a man s dignity, seemed to him at that 
 moment to be essentially served by capping 
 sensationalism with sensationalism. Sophis 
 ticated as he was in all the finer knowledges 
 that book or life could offer, afraid of nothing 
 on earth except the vulgarity of publicity, 
 shy of nothing on earth except his great, 
 grown-man desire for this little, young, ex 
 quisite girl, no power in the world could 
 have forced him then and there to take the 
 sweetest news he had ever known, or ever 
 was to know, it would seem, and slop it down 
 like so much kerosene to feed a flame already 
 quite noxious enough. Still fighting desper 
 ately for time, still parrying for enlighten 
 ment, he kept his mask-like face turned 
 blankly towards his companions. 
 
 "I protest!" he repeated tenaciously. 
 "There is some mistake some misunder 
 standing! Even in the two short months Miss 
 Bretton has been with us she has certainly 
 
 certainly " In a voice as low as a nun s 
 
 but particularly and peculiarly enunciative
 
 OLD-DAD 45 
 
 he focused suddenly on the President. "The 
 charge is absurd," he said. "It s outrageous! 
 Someone has lied of course! And lied very 
 badly." 
 
 With an ill-concealed gesture of exaspera 
 tion the President straightened up in her 
 chair and glared at her youngest professor. 
 
 "I am the only person who could have 
 lied, she affirmed with some hauteur. 
 Slowly into her cold strong-featured face a 
 hot flush ebbed and waned again through lips 
 that crisped a bit round the edges of her 
 words. "If you insist on knowing every de 
 tail, Mr. Burnarde," she said, "it was I my 
 self who discovered Miss Bretton! And she 
 was barefooted at the time and in her night 
 dress and clasped most emphatically in the 
 young man s arms." 
 
 "What?" cried Burnarde. His very heart 
 seemed to wrench itself loose at the word, 
 but his tight lips bit back the agony into a 
 mere raspishness of astonishment. "What?" 
 Then quite as unexpectedly to himself as to 
 any of the others an amazing little laugh 
 slipped through where even agony could not 
 passh. Oh ye god of Rhetoric! Ye subtlety
 
 46 OLD-DAD 
 
 of Satire! Ye psychology of Climax! Was 
 this the moment when a Master of Arts should 
 fling his tenderest morsel to the dogs? "Be 
 trothal?" Red as blood, white as a lily, the 
 word flashed through his stricken senses! 
 "Betrothal?" Oh ye gods of everything! A 
 betrothal so new, so shy, so sacred, so reveren 
 tial, that he had not yet even so much as 
 affrighted the cool, unawakened, little-girl 
 finger tips with the thrill of his grown-man 
 lips! A betrothal so new, so shy, so precious, 
 he had not yet even so much as shared the 
 secret with his adorable, patrician mother! 
 Announce it now? Proclaim it now? Merci 
 ful God! Was there anything left to 
 proclaim? Yes, that was just exactly the 
 question! Was there anything left to pro 
 claim? Even for loyalty, even in defense of 
 the Beloved who had chosen so garishly 
 elsewhere, would it greatly enhance a sub 
 stance as tender as a young girl s honor to 
 scream out now? "/ also claimed her 
 once?" Starkly his fine, clear-cut lips opened 
 and shut again. "I I protest!" he mumbled. 
 Vaguely in a chaotic blur he sensed a restless 
 exchange of glances, the soft, clothy shifting
 
 OLD-DAD 47 
 
 and stir of busy people impatient to be off. 
 Cleanly and concisely through the blur cut 
 the President s persistent purpose. 
 
 "Expulsion, of course," said the President, 
 "must always seem a drastic measure. But 
 in the safety and protection of the greater 
 number rests now as always the greater 
 mercy. This Bretton girl, I understand, has 
 grown up with practically no home surround 
 ings, being shifted about from one boarding 
 school to another ever since her earliest child 
 hood, and knowing apparently very little 
 more about her people than even I have been 
 able to glean. The circumstances are very 
 sad, of course, very unfortunate, but our duty 
 at the moment, of course, concerns itself with 
 results, not causes. Looking back now to her 
 first appearance among us two months ago I 
 realize that there has always been something 
 about her that was vaguely disquieting, 
 vaguely suggestive of lawlessness. Her eyes, 
 perhaps, her hair, some odd little trick of 
 manner. Certainly," quickened the Presi 
 dent, "I would not be doing my duty by the 
 hundreds of innocent young girls committed 
 to my care if "
 
 48 OLD-DAD 
 
 As though all life reverted then to the 
 mere pursuit of hats and coats and rubbers, 
 the Faculty Meeting dissolved into individual 
 interests again and dispersed as such along 
 the gloomy corridor and down the creaking 
 stairs. 
 
 It was winter-cold on the stairs. 
 
 Shuffling a little in his overshoes, jerking 
 his coat-collar just a bit tighter around his 
 throat, John Burnarde felt suddenly very 
 old. "Old? Merciful Heavens!" he winced. 
 He was only thirty-five! Did Age come like 
 that to a man in just the time it took him to 
 go up and down the same gray, creaky, 
 familiar stairs? "Apple Blossoms was it 
 that the old Mathematics Professor had said 
 she looked like? But God knew it wasn t just 
 her little face that was Apple Blossomy, but 
 her little mind also, and the little glad gay 
 heart of her! So fresh, so new, so virgin- 
 sweet! By what foul chance, by what incal 
 culable circumstance, had she blundered into 
 this? 
 
 Stripped of passion, stripped even of pro 
 test, stripped indeed of every human emotion 
 except his dignity and his pain he pushed his
 
 OLD-DAD 49 
 
 way blindly out through interminable heavy 
 doors and breasted the winter night. 
 
 Then quite suddenly, stripped of every 
 emotion except pain, he swung around in his 
 tracks, remounted the stairs, re-entered the 
 President s office, and slamming the door be 
 hind him, flung down even his dignity on the 
 altar of his love. 
 
 "Miss Merriwayne!" he said. "This thing 
 that you propose doing cannot be done! I 
 am engaged to Miss Bretton!" 
 
 For a single instant only, every knowledge, 
 manner, poise, that John Burnarde had been 
 born with, defied every knowledge, manner, 
 poise, that Claudia Merriwayne had worked 
 forty years to acquire. 
 
 Then reverting suddenly to the identical 
 accent with which Claudia Merriwayne s 
 mother was still lashing Claudia Merri 
 wayne s father, doubtless, in the little far 
 away North Kansas home, the College Presi 
 dent opened her thin lips to speak. 
 
 "The thing is already done, Mr. Burn 
 arde," she said. "Miss Bretton left town an 
 hour ago and with her paramour, I am 
 told!"
 
 50 OLD-DAD 
 
 "With her what?" cried John Burnarde. 
 
 "With her paramour, repeated the 
 President coolly. 
 
 "The word is unfortunate," frowned Burn 
 arde. 
 
 "So is the episode," said the President. 
 
 With a little sharp catch of his breath John 
 Burnarde stepped forward to the edge of the 
 desk. 
 
 "You understand that I am going to marry 
 Miss Bretton?" he affirmed with some in- 
 cisiveness. 
 
 "Not in my college!" said the President. 
 "Nor in any other college if I even so much 
 as remotely gauge either the professional or 
 the social exigencies of the situation." Em 
 phatically, but by no means extravagantly, she 
 drove her meaning home. "Do you dream 
 for one single moment, Mr. Burnarde," she 
 quizzed, "that any reputable college in the 
 land would accept, or maintain on its faculty," 
 she added significantly, "a man whose wife 
 for reasons of moral obliquity had not been 
 considered a safe associate for " 
 
 "You mean " interrupted John Burn 
 arde.
 
 OLD-DAD 51 
 
 "Everything that I say," acquiesced the 
 President, "and everything that I imply." 
 
 "That is your ultimatum?" questioned John 
 Burnarde. 
 
 "That is my ultimatum!" said the Presi 
 dent. 
 
 With the slightest perceptible tightening 
 of his lips John Burnarde began to put on his 
 gloves. 
 
 "Very fortunately," he said, "there are 
 other professions in the world besides the 
 teaching of English." 
 
 "Very fortunately," conceded the Presi 
 dent. One side of her mouth lifted very 
 faintly with the concession. "Yet somehow, 
 Mr. Burnarde," she added hastily, "I do not 
 seem to picture you as a as an automobile 
 salesman, for instance. Nor yet visualize that 
 frail, lovely mother of yours relinquishing 
 very easily her life-long ambitions for your 
 deanship which up to now, of course, has 
 by no means seemed the improbable fruition 
 of your distinguished services with us. Your 
 mother," mused the President, "has doubt 
 less made some sacrifices for you in her 
 time?"
 
 52 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Most mothers have!" snapped John Burn- 
 arde. 
 
 Roused snap for snap to his tone the Presi 
 dent leaned forward suddenly. 
 
 "You re not the only man," she cried, "who 
 has been both flouted and betrayed by Frivol 
 ity! Next time you choose " Her cheeks 
 
 flushed scarlet. "Next time you choose, per 
 haps you will choose more wisely, more 
 consistently with your age and attainments! 
 This mad infatuation is surely but the mood 
 of a moment, the " Recovering her self- 
 control as quickly almost as she had lost it 
 she sank back with typical statuesqueness into 
 her throne-like Jacobean chair. "Surely, Mr. 
 Burnarde," she asked in all sincerity, "you 
 must admit that the that the warning I have 
 given you is at least reasonable?" 
 
 "Absolutely reasonable!" said John Burn 
 arde. "And absolutely damnable!" And 
 turning on his heel he stalked from the room. 
 
 But even the winter night could not cool 
 his cheeks now, nor the great pile of unread 
 themes and forensics that he found awaiting 
 him in his room, divert his tortured mind for 
 one single second from the problems of a
 
 OLD-DAD 53 
 
 lover to the problems of a professor. Some 
 where indeed, he reasoned, among that white 
 flare of papers a fresh stab of pain undoubt 
 edly awaited him, a familiar handwriting 
 strangely poignant, some little brand new bud 
 of an idea forging valiantly upward through 
 the clotted sod of academic tradition into the 
 sunshine of acknowledged success, a purely 
 prosy rhetorical question, perhaps, thrilled to 
 its very interrogation mark by the sweet new 
 secret hidden behind its formality! 
 
 With an irrestible impulse he began sud 
 denly to rummage through- the themes. Yes, 
 here was the handwriting! With fingers that 
 trembled he unfolded the page. Dated the 
 very night before this dreadful thing had hap 
 pened, surely somehow somewhere on this 
 very page the dreadful thing must be dis 
 proved! 
 
 "Dear Mr. Burnarde," ran the little note 
 pinned to the page. "Dear Mr. Burnarde" 
 (Oh, the delicious camouflage of the formal 
 ity). Please, I beg of you do not be angry 
 with me because I am submitting no prose 
 theme this week! I just can t, somehow! I m 
 all verse these days! What do you think
 
 54 OLD-DAD 
 
 about this one? There are oodles and oodles 
 more lines to it of course, but this is to be 
 the recurrent refrain: 
 
 He who made Hunger, Love, and the Sea, 
 Made three tides which have got to be! 
 
 Oh, of course, I know you ll say that the word 
 got isn t particularly poetical and all that. 
 But it s simply got to be got, don t you see? 
 
 Why " 
 
 Right in the middle of the unfinished sen 
 tence he crumpled the page in his hand. 
 Merciful Heavens, if she was innocent why 
 hadn t she written him? Or even if she were 
 
 sorry only? Or even if If people had 
 
 any explanations to give they usually gave 
 them to you, didn t they? "Gave" them to 
 you? Forced them on you, rather, didn t 
 they? Fairly hurled them at you? This stak 
 ing all for love? Yes, surely! Social posi 
 tion! Professional reputation! Even his 
 mother s heart! For love? Yes, that was it! 
 But suppose the object of such love fairly 
 flaunted herself as being neither loving nor 
 lovable? Maddened anew by the futility of 
 it all he plunged down at his desk and began
 
 OLD-DAD 55 
 
 to write a letter and tore that letter up! 
 And began another and tore that up! And 
 began another! Merciful Heavens! he suf 
 fered. Was his hand palsied? His brain 
 blighted? Were there no live words left in 
 all the world except just those which 
 crowded every other sane thought out of his 
 mind? 
 
 "He who made hunger, love, and the sea, 
 Made three tides which have got to bel"
 
 Ill 
 
 TAKEN all in all, mileage undoubt 
 edly is just about the paltriest form 
 of separation that can occur between 
 two people. If only Fate would break its 
 impish habit of always and forever intro 
 ducing such perfectly unexpected things into 
 mileage! Even Fate though at just this time 
 hadn t quite made up its mind perhaps just 
 what it intended to do with little Daphne 
 Bretton! 
 
 Given good food, a brave heart, and any 
 reasonable amount of diversion, most young 
 people outgrow their sins and even their 
 mistakes almost as soon as they outgrow their 
 clothes. But to outgrow a punishment is quite 
 a different matter! People who deal out 
 punishments ought to think about that! 
 
 Daphne Bretton and her father had to think 
 a good deal about it. Daphne especially! 
 Totally uninjured by her mistake but pretty 
 badly crippled by her punishment the world 
 looked very dark to Daphne. 
 
 56
 
 OLD-DAD 57 
 
 Being only eighteen and having thus far 
 evolved no special philosophy of her own 
 concerning the best way to meet Life s in 
 evitable disasters it was rather fortunate per 
 haps in the present emergency that she had 
 at least her father s philosophy to fall back 
 upon. Her father s philosophy was so amaz 
 ingly simple. 
 
 "No matter what happens," said her father, 
 "never wear a worried looking hat!" 
 
 "Which being interpreted," puzzled 
 Daphne, "means " 
 
 Like a Fancier perfectly willing to share 
 the cut-flowers of his mind but quite dis 
 tinctly opposed to parting with the roots of 
 any of his ideas her father parried the ques 
 tion. 
 
 "Which being interpreted," he repeated a 
 bit stiffly, "means Never wear a worried look 
 ing hat! " 
 
 Certainly there developed nothing worried 
 looking about Daphne Bretton s Florida-go 
 ing hat! Nor about her suit, either! Nor 
 her shoes! Nor her silken stockings! Her 
 hat was crisp, with a flare of pink in it, her 
 suit was blue, her shoes and silkies distinctly
 
 58 OLD-DAD 
 
 trim. From top to toe, bright hair, bright 
 cheeks, lithe little body and all, there was 
 nothing worried looking about Daphne Bret- 
 ton except her eyes. Sweet eyes they were too, 
 wide set, wistful, and inherently frank, 
 though vaguely furtive now with the tragic, 
 incongruous furtiveness of youth that having 
 once perhaps feared overmuch that it would 
 not be noticed is panic-stricken now lest it 
 may be. Little girl eyes distinctly, and the 
 eyes of a very worried little girl at that! 
 
 In the joggling crowd at the railroad sta 
 tion two women noticed her only too quickly. 
 The little blue hound himself sniffing close 
 at her heels quickened to the trail no more 
 avidly than they. 
 
 "Bet you a dollar," gasped the first, "that 
 that s the Bretton girl!" 
 
 "Bretton girl?" gloated the other in an only 
 too audible whisper. 
 
 "Why, yes, of course, you know," nudged 
 the first "That one, you know, that was ex 
 pelled from college for having a boy in her 
 room at night! Oh, an awful scandal it was! 
 Why the Sunday papers were full of it last 
 week!" ,-
 
 OLD-DAD 59 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course, I saw it," confided the 
 second. "A whole page of pictures, wasn t 
 it? Perfectly disgusting, I call it! So bold 
 so " 
 
 "Pretty, though, isn t she?" deprecated the 
 first. 
 
 "If you like that fast type," sneered the 
 second. 
 
 "Oh, and look at her now!" snickered the 
 first. "Got an older man in tow this time! 
 And, oh goodness, but isn t he a stunner with 
 all that white hair and elegant figure and 
 swell traveling bags! If there s one thing I 
 think refined it s swell traveling bags! But, 
 oh, isn t it awful the way rich people cut up? 
 Wouldn t you think her folks would stop her? 
 Wouldn t you?" 
 
 From under the sheltering, shadowy brim 
 of her hat Daphne shot an agonized glance 
 at her father s half-averted face. But to her 
 infinite astonishment her father s deep-set eyes 
 were utterly serene, and even his shrewd 
 mouth was relaxed at the moment into the 
 faint ghost of a perfectly amiable smile. 
 
 "Old-Dad are you deaf?" she gasped with 
 a little quick clutch at his arm.
 
 60 OLD-DAD 
 
 "When geese are cackling," said her father. 
 
 "And blind?" flared Daphne. 
 
 "When the view is offensive," admitted her 
 father. With unwavering nonchalance he 
 swung around suddenly to the nearest news 
 stand and began then and there to pile 
 Daphne s blue broadcloth arms with every 
 funny paper in sight. 
 
 From lips quivering so that they could 
 barely function their speech Daphne pro 
 tested the action. "Why why, Old-Dad," 
 she pleaded. "Do you think for one single 
 moment that I shall ever smile again? Or 
 or ever even want to smile again?" In a 
 fresh shiver of tears and shame the hot tears 
 started to her eyes. "Why I m nothing but 
 but just an outlaw!" she gasped. "A a 
 sort of a " 
 
 "Personally," conceded her father, "I d in 
 finitely rather travel with an outlaw than an 
 inlaw! They re so inherently more consid 
 erate somehow, so " Quite imperturb- 
 
 ably as he spoke he kept right on piling up 
 the magazines in Daphne s protesting arms. 
 "Steady there, Kiddie!" he admonished her 
 smilingly. "Steady! Steady! Never let any
 
 OLD-DAD 61 
 
 sorrow you ll ever meet leak into your chance 
 to laugh! Water-tight your compartments 
 that s the idea! Love, Hope, Fear, Pride, 
 Ambition everything walled off and sepa 
 rate from another! And then if you run into 
 a bit of bad weather now and then, Little 
 Girl, you won t " Aghast at the increas 
 ing tremor of the little figure he broke off 
 abruptly in the midst of his message. "Why 
 the only trouble with you, Daphne," he 
 laughed, "is that you are so pretty! It s an 
 awful responsibility I tell you to travel with 
 a daughter who s so extravagantly pretty. So 
 many complicating things are bound to 
 happen all the time. Beaux, for instance, 
 and " 
 
 "Beaux?" winced Daphne. 
 
 "Such as the incipient one yonder," nodded 
 her father. 
 
 Following the general direction of the nod 
 the girl s eyes raked somewhat covertly but 
 none the less thoroughly the shadow just back 
 of the flower booth. 
 
 "O h," she shivered. "That?" Back of 
 her lovely blondeness, her youth, her vitality, 
 the delicate fine-boned structure of her face
 
 62 OLD-DAD 
 
 loomed suddenly into the faint, poignant out 
 line of the ultimate skull. "Do do you 
 think he s a reporter?" she stammered. 
 
 "Reporter nothing!" snapped her father. 
 Snatching up the traveling bags he headed 
 quite precipitously for the train. White as 
 a little ghost Daphne pattered after him. 
 Close at her heels followed the blue hound. 
 
 "What a stunning looking man!" said some 
 one. "And what an awfully pretty girl!" 
 murmured another. "And what a funny 
 looking dog!" agreed everybody. 
 
 "For goodness sake, don t you know who 
 it is?" called the girl at the flower booth to 
 the girl at the news-stand. 
 
 "Naw," admitted the girl at the news-stand. 
 
 "Oh, pshaw," preened the girl at the flower 
 booth. "Don t you know anything? Why 
 it s JafTrey Bretton the the well, I don t 
 know what he is except that he s richer than 
 oh, richer than Croesus! And wild? Oh, 
 Gee! Why I knew a chauffeur once that 
 knew a cook that said " 
 
 So JafTrey Bretton and Daphne and the 
 little blue hound passed from the rabble of 
 the station to the rumble of the train.
 
 OLD-DAD 63 
 
 The rumble of the train is at least a pleas 
 ant sound. And when one s nerves are just 
 a bit over-frazzled with the cantankerous 
 parlance of men it is not a half bad idea for 
 the price of a railroad ticket to yield one s 
 ears for such time as one may to the simpler 
 things that Steel, Wood, and Plush have to say 
 to each other. "Strength!" pulses Steel. 
 "Form!" urges Wood. "Rest!" purrs Plush. 
 "Strength Form Rest! Strength Form 
 Rest!" On and on and on, just like that, day 
 and night, mile and mile, swirl and sway, 
 with no more effort to one s brittle-nerved, 
 ice-chilled body than lolling in a bath-tub 
 would be, while the great Sunny South like 
 so much hot water comes pouring in, a little 
 deeper, a little hotter, every minute, to lave 
 and soothe Past, Present, and Future alike. 
 God bless Railroad Journeys! 
 
 Surely it was at least twenty-four restful 
 hours before the "parlance of men" caught 
 up with Daphne and her father again. This 
 catching up, however, proved itself quite suffi 
 ciently unpleasant. 
 
 It had been rather an eerie day, an eerie 
 twilight anyway, as railroad twilights are apt
 
 64 OLD-DAD 
 
 to be with a great, smooth- running, brilliantly 
 lighted, ultra-perfected train of ultra-per 
 fected cars slipping deeper and deeper and 
 deeper into the black morass of a wild, 
 swampy, tropical night. 
 
 Eeerieness for eerieness Daphne Bretton s 
 eyes matched the night. Sparkle for sparkle 
 Jaffrey Bretton s eyes matched the train. To 
 escape the sparkle Daphne pleaded a desire 
 to dally alone in her quiet dark drawing- 
 room. To escape the eerieness Jaffrey Bret- 
 ton vaunted the intention of finding some stray 
 man who could smoke more cigars than he. 
 With an unwonted touch of formality, a 
 sudden strange shyness of scene and sentiment 
 they bowed their good-nights to each other. 
 
 "See you in the morning!" nodded her 
 father. 
 
 "In the morning," acquiesced Daphne. 
 
 Nothing on earth could have brightened 
 her eyes at the moment. Nothing on earth 
 could have dulled her father s. Yet within 
 an hour when they met again it was Daphne s 
 face that was fairly blazing with excitement 
 and her father s that was stricken with brood 
 ing.
 
 OLD-DAD 65 
 
 Maybe too much "looking back" even from 
 the last car of a train isn t specially good for 
 any man. Certainly just sitting up till nine 
 o clock never made any man look so tired. 
 
 Joggling back to his warm, plushy Pullman 
 car from the cindery murk and chill of the 
 observation platform it was then that Jaffrey 
 Bretton sensed through the tail of his eye, as 
 it were, the kaleidoscopic blur of a scuffle in 
 the smoking-room. Tweed-brown, news 
 paper-white, broadcloth-blue, the fleeting im 
 press struck across his jaded optic nerve, till 
 roused by a sudden lurch of his heart to the 
 familiar blueness of that blue he whirled 
 around in the narrow aisle and yanked aside 
 the curtain just in time to behold a perfectly 
 strange young man forcing a kiss on Daphne s 
 infuriated lips. 
 
 "But I am Daphne Bretton! I am! lamf 
 fought the girl. 
 
 "Why, of course, you re Daphne Bret- 
 ton! " kissed the man. "So why be so par 
 ticular?" 
 
 "And I happen to be Daphne Bretton s 
 father!" hailed Jaffrey Bretton quite in 
 cisively from the doorway.
 
 66 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Eh? What?" jumped the Kissing Man. 
 
 "Oh O h!" gasped Daphne. 
 
 With a somewhat hectic attempt at non 
 chalance the Kissing Man stooped down and 
 picked up the crumpled newspaper at his feet. 
 
 "Well, it s my newspaper, anyway!" he 
 grinned. 
 
 "It s mine if I want it!" began Daphne all 
 over again. 
 
 With a quick jerk of his wrist the stranger 
 twisted the newspaper from the girl s snatch 
 ing fingers and began rather awkwardly to 
 smooth out the crumple and piece together 
 the fragments. It was the pictorial supple 
 ment of a week-old Sunday paper and from 
 its front page loomed an almost life-sized 
 portrait of Daphne extravagantly bordered 
 and garnished with what some cheap car 
 toonist considered a facetious portrayal of 
 Daphne s recent tragedy. 
 
 "Do you want your head kicked off?" 
 asked Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "No, I don t," admitted the stranger. "But 
 even if I did," he confided with undismayed 
 diablerie, "how ever in the world should we 
 locate it? I seem to have lost it so badly!"
 
 OLD-DAD 67 
 
 By no means unattractive even in his im 
 pudence he turned his flushed, indecorous 
 face to Daphne and in the sudden tilt of his 
 deeply-cleft chin the electric light struck 
 down rather mercilessly across a faint white 
 scar that slashed zig-zag from his turbid, 
 reckless eyes to a most ingenuous dimple in 
 his left cheek. 
 
 "You are drunk!" said Jaffrey Bretton 
 quite frankly. 
 
 "Yes, a little," admitted the stranger. "But 
 even so," he persisted with an elaborate bow. 
 "But even so, the young lady here will hardly 
 contend, I think, that I acted entirely without 
 provocation!" 
 
 "Provocation?" questioned Jaffrey Bretton. 
 With the faintest perceptible frown blacken 
 ing between his brows he turned to his 
 daughter. "Daphne," he said, "don t you 
 know that you haven t any business to enter 
 a man s smoking-room?" 
 
 "But he wasn t smoking!" flared Daphne. 
 "He was sleeping!" 
 
 "Well a man s sleeping- room, then?" con 
 ceded her father. 
 
 "But I simply had to have that newspaper!"
 
 68 OLD-DAD 
 
 insisted Daphne. "I tell you I won t have 
 it flaunted all over the train! Brought into 
 the dining-car every meal! Flapped and 
 rustled in my face everywhere I look! Oh, 
 you think you re funny, do you?" she cried 
 out furiously as with one swift dart she 
 snatched the offending page from the 
 stranger s unguarded grasp and tore it into 
 shreds before his eyes. "Oh, you think you re 
 fu fu funny, do you?" she began to babble 
 hysterically. 
 
 "Yes but Daphne," said her father with 
 scarcely a lift to his voice, "surely you don t 
 imagine for a moment that you re destroying 
 the whole edition? It can t be done, you know. 
 No one yet has ever found a way to do it. 
 Ten years hence from a wayside hovel some 
 well-meaning crone will hand you the page 
 to wrap your muddy rubbers in! Five thou 
 sand miles from here, on the other side of the 
 world, you ll open your top bureau drawer 
 to find it lined with your own immortal fea 
 tures! You just simply have to get used to 
 it, that s all. Laugh at it! Keep a laugh 
 always handy for just that thing!" 
 
 " Laugh? ", flared Daphne. With a fresh
 
 OLD-DAD 69 
 
 burst of fury she tore the tattered page 
 through and through again. "Well, IVe de 
 stroyed this copy!" she triumphed. "No 
 darkey porters or smirking tourists will ever 
 see this copy! And maybe when I get to 
 Florida," she cried, "snakes will bite me! Or 
 typhoons shipwreck me! Or or something 
 happen so that I won t have to come home 
 
 again! But you, Old-Dad " Tottering 
 
 ever so slightly where she stood all the hot 
 anger in her eyes faded suddenly into the 
 vague, sinister bewilderment of a young mind 
 crowded dangerously near to the edge of its 
 endurance. "You you see nobody knew I 
 was bad until the College President said so," 
 she explained painstakingly to no one in par 
 ticular. "I didn t even know it myself, I 
 mean. But my father " she rekindled in 
 stantly. Like the rippling start of a young 
 tiger just getting ready to spring she swung 
 around sharply on the stranger again. 
 "Surely you didn t think for a moment that 
 it was just myself I was thinking about in 
 that wicked old paper?" she demanded furi 
 ously of him. "For Heaven s sake, what 
 earthly difference do you think any such thing
 
 70 OLD-DAD 
 
 can make to me now? My life s over and 
 done with! But my father? The dreadful 
 malicious flippant things they said about my 
 father!" 
 
 "O h! So it was my honor, was it, that 
 you were defending?" asked her father a bit 
 dryly. 
 
 As though she had not even heard the ques 
 tion, Daphne lifted her flaming, defiant little 
 face to the stranger s. "Why, my Father s an 
 angel!" she attested. "And he always was an 
 angel/ And he always will be an angell" 
 
 "In which case," interposed her father 
 quite abruptly, "we had better leave I think 
 while the angeling is still good!" With a 
 touch that looked like the graze of a butter 
 fly s wing and felt like a lash of steel wires 
 he curved his arm across her shoulder and 
 swept her from the smoking-room. Once 
 outside the curtain his directions were equally 
 concise. "Trot along to your drawing-room, 
 Kiddie!" he ordered. "I ll join you pres 
 ently." 
 
 As he swung back into the smoking-room 
 he almost tripped across the stranger s sprawl 
 ing feet. Huddled in the corner with his
 
 OLD-DAD 71 
 
 face buried in his hands the stranger sat sob 
 bing like a woman. 
 
 "You are drunker than I thought!" said 
 Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "I am fully that," admitted the stranger. 
 
 "And a rotter!" said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "Oh, no end of a rotter!" conceded the 
 stranger. 
 
 "And if I am not very much mistaken," 
 mused Jaffrey Bretton, "you are also the same 
 man whom I noted yesterday afternoon at 
 the flower booth in the railroad station star 
 ing so unconscionably not to say offensively 
 hard at my daughter?" 
 
 "I deny nothing!" hiccoughed the stranger. 
 With an emotion that would have done credit 
 to a sober sorrow he lifted his stricken face 
 to his accuser. "And I don t mind at all 
 that I m drunk," he confided. "Nor nor 
 yet being the man who stared so so hard at 
 your daughter. But but why am I such a 
 rotter? Frankly now as man to man how 
 could I be such a rotter? That nice nice 
 
 little girl! That " With uncontrollable 
 
 remorse he buried his face in his hands 
 again.
 
 72 OLD-DAD 
 
 "There are never but two reasons why a 
 man pursues a woman," observed Bretton, 
 "One because he respects her, and the other 
 because he doesn t. My daughter has, of 
 course, been a little unfortunate lately in 
 achieving a certain amount of cheap news 
 paper notoriety." In a perfectly even line 
 of interrogation his fine eyebrows lifted ever 
 so slightly. "There was a woman back there 
 at the railroad station," he confided, as though 
 in sheer impulsiveness, "who rated my 
 daughter indeed as being fast looking. Now 
 just about how fast looking would you con 
 sider her?" 
 
 From behind the cage of his fingers the 
 young man s lips emitted a most unhappy 
 little groan. 
 
 "Why why I should consider her," he 
 mumbled, "just just about as fast looking 
 as a new-born babe!" But his rowdy eyes, 
 raking the older man s face, gathered no 
 answering smile to their humor. "N n o?" 
 he rallied desperately. "N o? On on 
 further consideration I should say that that 
 she wasn t half as fast looking as a new 
 born babe! What? Eh?" he questioned wo r-
 
 OLD-DAD 73 
 
 riedly. "Well not a hundredth part, then? 
 Not a thousandth? Not a not a billionth? 
 Oh, upon my soul," he sweated, "I can t think 
 what comes higher than billions! 
 
 "A billion is plenty high enough," said 
 Jaffrey Bretton. "But such being the case 
 why did you do it?" 
 
 "Why did I do it?" mumbled the stranger. 
 
 "Why? Why " Once again the rakish, 
 
 confused young face lifted, but this time at 
 least a single illuminating conviction trans 
 figured its confusion. "Why because she 
 was so pretty!" 
 
 With a cigarette at his lips, a match poised 
 halfway in mid-air, Jaffrey Bretton s heels 
 clicked together. Sharp as the crackle of a 
 trainer s whip his smile snapped into the 
 situation. 
 
 "So you admit that she is pretty?" he asked 
 quite tersely. 
 
 As though the question were a hook that 
 fairly yanked him to his feet the stranger 
 struggled upward and crossed his limp arms 
 on his breast. 
 
 "She is adorable!" he testified. 
 
 "And young?" urged Jaffrey Bretton.
 
 74 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Very young," acknowledged the stranger. 
 
 "And spirited?" prodded Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "Even tom-boyish perhaps? And distinctly 
 innocent?" 
 
 "Oh, perfectly spirited!" grinned the 
 stranger a bit wanly. "Ditto tom-boyish! 
 And most essentially innocent!" 
 
 "So innocent," persisted Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "So tom-boyish so spirited so young so 
 pretty that taken all in all the only wonder 
 is that she wasn t expelled from college 
 before." 
 
 "It is an absolute miracle!" brightened the 
 stranger quite precipitously. 
 
 With a shrug of his shoulders Jaffrey Bret- 
 ton resumed the lighting of his cigarette. 
 
 "The days of miracles are reputedly 
 over," he confided very casually between 
 puffs. "But the natural phenomenon of a 
 formal apology is still occasionally observed, 
 I believe, in the case where either a very 
 crude or a very cruel injustice has been 
 done." 
 
 With a click of his own heels the stranger 
 added at least an inch to his otherwise slouch 
 ing height.
 
 OLD-DAD 75 
 
 "I apologize in all languages!" he hastened 
 to affirm. 
 
 " J e S beklager at jeg har vaeret uhoflig. 
 That s it in Norwegian, I believe! Now in 
 Spanish " 
 
 "What is just Plain Sorry? " interrupted 
 Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "/ am!" cried the stranger. Like a sign 
 post pointing "This way to the Smile!" the 
 faint white scar that slashed across his face 
 seemed to twitch suddenly towards the aston 
 ishing dimple in his left cheek. Robbed for 
 that single instant of its frowning, furtive-eyed 
 emphasis, his whole haggard young face as 
 sumed an expression of extraordinary ingenu 
 ousness. "Certainly, you ve been awfully 
 decent to me!" he smiled. "Thank you for 
 being so so decent! But but whatever in 
 the world made you so decent?" he began to 
 waver ever so slightly. "Most fa fathers 
 you know, would have knocked me down!" 
 
 "I don t knock sick men down," said 
 JafTrey Bretton quite simply. 
 
 "Sick men?" flared the stranger, all eyes 
 again. 
 
 "But some fathers haven t such scru-
 
 76 OLD-DAD 
 
 pies," confided Jaffrey Bretton. With abso 
 lutely merciless scrutiny his eyes swept over 
 the swaying young figure before him hollow 
 temples, narrow chest, twittering wrists, and 
 all. "And if I hadn t any longer to live 
 than you evidently have," he added, without 
 a flex of accent, "I don t think I would 
 squander any very large amount of it in 
 forcing tipsy kisses on young girls." 
 
 "What would you do?" asked the stranger 
 quite surprisingly. 
 
 "God knows!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "But 
 not that!" 
 
 "Yes but what?" pleaded the stranger. 
 
 "Search me!" shrugged Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "That s the whole trouble with whooping it 
 up, " he confided quite frankly. "There s so 
 blamed little to whoop ! And it s so soon over! 
 If one only could believe now what the 
 preachers have te say " 
 
 "Preachers?" sniffed the stranger. 
 
 "It is, I admit, a sniffy idea," said Jaffrey 
 Bretton, "but undeniably quaint! Being 
 somewhat to the effect that the pursuit of 
 good works, on the contrary, is an absolutely 
 inexhaustible amusement! Brand-new every
 
 OLD-DAD 77 
 
 morning, I mean! Just as original at night! 
 A perfectly thrilling novelty even at noon! 
 Heartache in it now and then perhaps but 
 never any headache! Atrophy of the pocket- 
 book perhaps but never atrophy of the 
 liver!" 
 
 "Never any headache?" contemplated 
 the stranger. "Not even in the morning, you 
 mean?" Across his face a faint incredulous 
 smile twisted wryly like a twinge of pain. 
 "Oh, now you re joshing!" he said. "In all 
 the world there never was any idea as quaint 
 as that!" 
 
 "Oh, nonsense!" snapped Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "I ve got an idea of my own that s twice as 
 quaint as that!" 
 
 "Such as what?" bridled the stranger. 
 
 Across the sweet-scented blur of a fresh 
 cigarette the older man s eyes narrowed sud 
 denly to two mere glints of steel. 
 
 "I I hated the way you kissed my little 
 girl!" he said. 
 
 "Y yes?" stammered the stranger. 
 
 "That youngster of mine is such a little 
 youngster," mused JafTrey Bretton perfectly 
 evenly. "So totally inexperienced! So des-
 
 78 OLD-DAD 
 
 perately affrighted and bewildered already 
 with the untoward happenings of the past 
 week! Personally," he persisted, "I want 
 neither Prude nor Wanton in my family, but 
 either one of them unfortunately is made 
 only too easily out of the same sex-shock. In 
 view of which case and under all existing cir 
 cumstances you have made it considerably 
 harder, I think, for my little girl to recon 
 struct normal sex standards while that par 
 ticular kiss of yours remains the last one in 
 her memory. So I will thank you," said 
 Jaffrey Bretton, "to accompany me now to 
 her drawing-room and show her as best you 
 may how even a man like you can kiss a 
 woman Good-night instead of Bad-night! 
 
 "What?" jumped the stranger. 
 
 Starkly for an instant he probed Jaffrey 
 Bretton s unflinching eyes. Then rubbing one 
 hand for a single instant across his clammy 
 forehead he followed Jaffrey Bretton out 
 through the plushy green curtain into the 
 aisle. 
 
 In the general joggle of the train it was 
 comfortable for each perhaps that the other s 
 footsteps swayed no more, no less, than his
 
 OLD-DAD 79 
 
 own. Even outside Daphne s door the foot 
 ing was none too certain. 
 
 "Let us in!" cried Daphne s father quite 
 peremptorily. 
 
 In a vague mist of rumpled gold hair and 
 soft white negligee Daphne opened the door 
 and ushered the two men into her trig little 
 room. 
 
 Without a moment s delay Jafrrey Bretton 
 sprung the question that was already on his 
 lips. "Daphne have you ever been kissed 
 very much?" 
 
 Above the cruel shadows that underlined 
 the lovely young eyes, the eyes themselves 
 widened still with blank astonishment of a 
 little girl. But the white teeth that gleamed 
 so brightly in the half-light were caught for 
 the first time in their lives across the crimson 
 line of an over-conscious under lip. 
 
 "I said, Were you ever kissed very 
 much? " repeated her father a bit tersely. 
 
 It was the big, blue, bewildered child s eyes 
 that proved the truth of the red lips answer. 
 
 "Why why once," stammered Daphne 
 perplexedly. "Why once on a boat when I 
 was a little girl and and lost my doll over-
 
 SO OLD-DAD 
 
 board an an old lady jumped up and 
 kissed me. Oughtn t she to have?" Heavy 
 with bewilderment only the blue eyes lifted 
 to the stranger s face, winced darkly away 
 again behind their shadowy lashes, and 
 opened wide once more to her father s 
 strangely inscrutable smile. 
 
 "Yes but man-kisses?" probed her father 
 quite mercilessly. "You you are engaged to 
 be married?" 
 
 "I I was engaged to be married," cor 
 rected Daphne. It was the red lips that did 
 
 all the answering now. "If you mean- " 
 
 curled the red lips, "if you mean " Start- 
 
 lingly just above her delicate cheek-bones two 
 spots of red flared suddenly. "It it just 
 never happened somehow," she whispered. 
 "Maybe people don t kiss much before 
 they re married." Into the blue eyes sud 
 denly welled a great blur of tears. "It just 
 never happened that s all," quivered the 
 red lips. Quick as a bolt the white teeth shot 
 across the quiver. "Thank God it never hap 
 pened!" cried the red lips. "I loathe men! 
 I despise them! I " 
 
 "This this gentleman," said Jaffrey Bret-
 
 OLD-DAD 81 
 
 ton, quite abruptly, "has come to kiss you 
 Good-night! " 
 
 "What?" screamed Daphne. Reeling back 
 against the dark wainscoting she stood there 
 before them with a single slender hand 
 creeping out of its white sleeve towards her 
 throat. 
 
 "Oh, I admit," said her father, "that it will 
 not be just the kiss that the old lady gave you 
 when your doll was drowned. Nor yet the 
 kiss that your English Professor was doubt 
 less planning to give you some time. But 
 as kisses go you will find no fault with it 
 I am quite sure." 
 
 "Why why, Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne. 
 
 Flaming with protest, paling with revul 
 sion, she lifted her stricken eyes to the 
 stranger only to find that his own face was 
 quite as stricken as hers. 
 
 Ashy-gray where his flush had been, faintly 
 green around his insolent young nostrils, his 
 eyes seemed fairly begging for mercy. Then 
 quite suddenly he gave a queer, strained little 
 smile, sank down on one knee like a hero in 
 a Play, and picking up the hem of her gown 
 pressed his lips solemnly to it.
 
 82 OLD-DAD 
 
 "You little funny furious Baby," he 
 began, twitched his queer smile again, and 
 crumpled up at her feet! "Call my man 
 quick!" he mumbled thickly. "Next car 
 somewhere. Good-night! Good-night!" 
 
 But it was not a good night even so! Even 
 what was left of the night was not good! 
 Even after the brief commotion was over and 
 the young stranger had been carried off more 
 or less stumblingly to his own quarters in the 
 hands of a most efficient and formidable 
 valet, Daphne found her car only too frankly 
 a sleepless car. Curling up just as she was 
 in her easiest window-corner with all her pil 
 lows crushed behind her back, her knees 
 hunched to her chin in the clasp of her slim 
 white arms, she sat wide-eyed and feverish 
 watching the cindery-smelling Southland go 
 rushing darkly by to meet the North. Long 
 forgotten incidents of her littlest childhood 
 flared hectically back to her! Optical im 
 pressions so recent that they had scarcely yet 
 reported to her consciousness seared like 
 flame across her senses! The funny, furry 
 scallop of her first kitten s ear, the jingling 
 tune of a Christmas Cantata, the quite ir-
 
 OLD-DAD 83 
 
 relevant weave of the gray silk tie her 
 English professor had worn at his last 
 lecture, the queer white scar that slashed 
 the tipsy stranger s face, some turquoise- 
 colored dishes she had seen once in a 
 shop-window, the crackling rhyme-words 
 "faster" "disaster" of a new poem she had 
 just planned to write, the horrid crushed 
 feeling of her nose when that Wiltoner boy 
 had caught her so roughly to his breast, white 
 narcissus and scarlet tulips bunched together 
 somewhere in a jet-black basket, and and 
 always that queer white scar that slashed the 
 tipsy stranger s face! Clacketty-clack-clack- 
 clack of wheels and brakes, rhythm and 
 rumble, rapture of speed, stark-eyed sleep 
 lessness, a Railroad Night! Murky black 
 ness spangled with hamlet lights! Intermin 
 able miles of wraith-like fog! A night-heron 
 winging his homeward way suddenly across 
 a bizarre sky striped like a Japanese fan! 
 The faint, sweet, unbelievable scent of orange 
 blossoms! And then the Florida Dawn! 
 
 It was the dawn that crept so inquisitively 
 to the hem of Daphne s gown. 
 
 With her lovely tousled head cocked ever
 
 84 OLD-DAD 
 
 so slightly to one side Daphne s glance fol 
 lowed the dawn s. Between her perfect eye 
 brows a curious little frown puckered sud 
 denly. With a quick, raspy catch of her 
 breath she jumped from her couch and bolted 
 for her father s compartment. Digging her 
 fingers quite unceremoniously into his gay- 
 colored flannel shoulders she roused him from 
 his dreams. 
 
 "Old-Dad!" she cried, "I can t sleep!" 
 
 "Very few people can," growled her father. 
 "So why fuss about it?" 
 
 "Yes but Old-Dad!" persisted the girl. 
 Her teeth were chattering and from hand to 
 feet a dreadful convulsive chill seemed to be 
 racking her suddenly. 
 
 "For Heaven s sake, what s the matter?" 
 cried her father. 
 
 "It s that kiss!" quivered Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, shucks!" relaxed her father. "For 
 get it! It was a bit rough, I know! But 
 remember you had no right at all to go 
 foraging into a tipsy man s smoking-room!" 
 
 "Smoking-room?" gasped Daphne. "Why 
 why I d forgotten all about that! The 
 the kiss, I mean" her eyes were wide
 
 OLD-DAD 85 
 
 with horror, "the kiss, I mean " White 
 
 as a ghost suddenly she lifted to her father s 
 eyes the filmy hem of her gown where in 
 two faint crimson splashes across one corner 
 a man had stenciled the bow of his lips with 
 his own life-blood. 
 
 "The deuce!" cried her father, and jump 
 ing into his wrapper rang precipitously for 
 the porter. 
 
 "The young man who was who was sick 
 last night the one that had the hemorrhage 
 what about him?" he demanded of the first 
 white-coated Darky who came running. 
 
 "Is is he dead?" whispered Daphne. 
 
 "The young man what had the hemor 
 rhage," confided the Darky, "he done gone 
 leap from the train." 
 
 "What?" cried Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 Enraptured by the excitement the Darky 
 ripped his somber face in a white grin from 
 ear to ear. 
 
 "He sure did, Sah!" he attested genially. 
 "Back thar jes as we was leavin the water 
 tank it was ! More n an hour back I reckon! -. 
 With a sudden elongation of his grin that 
 threatened to separate the whole upper part
 
 86 OLD-DAD 
 
 of his face from the lower he rallied himself 
 for his real news. "Was you by any chance, 
 sah," he grinned, "the gentleman what owned 
 the cat-hound in the baggage car?" 
 
 " Cat-hound? " flared Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "I ve got a thousand-dollar slate-colored 
 hound in the baggage car if that s what you 
 mean?" 
 
 "You ain t done got him now," regretted 
 the Darky. "It was him that jumps off first 
 at the water tank. The cat was yeller. One 
 of them sort of swamp cats that " 
 
 With a cry of real dismay Jaffrey Bretton 
 pushed the Darky aside and started for the 
 door. 
 
 " Twon t do you no good now, sah," pro 
 tested the Darky. "It was more n an hour 
 ago I reckon and the Captain of this ere 
 train he don t stop nothing for no dog." 
 
 "No, of course not!" cried Jaffrey Bretton, 
 "But we ve got to do something! The swamp 
 country " 
 
 "Yes, sah, that s the trouble with these ere 
 hound-dogs," reflected the Darky. "They 
 runs till they busts. And when they busts 
 they bogs down. And jes as soon as they bogs
 
 OLD-DAD 87 
 
 down Mr. Alligator or Mr. Little Ole Mocas 
 sin snake he It was when the young 
 
 gentleman sees the swamp that he jumps. 
 Tell the folks not to worry, he hollers. Tell 
 em this little ole good works speriment am 
 only just begun! Was you his folks?" 
 brightened the Darky. 
 
 "No!" flared Daphne. 
 
 "Yes!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "Go get me 
 a telegraph blank quick!" he ordered. 
 "Find out what the last station back was! 
 And the next one ahead!" 
 
 Expeditiously the Darky plunged through 
 the door, then swung back for one more 
 sentence. 
 
 "There was some gentlemens down here 
 las year what lost their hound-dog. Jes two 
 hours it was and when they foun him he was 
 all buzzard-et." 
 
 "Hush your mouth!" said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "But, Old-Dad," shivered Daphne, "what 
 about the the man?" 
 
 "Men can look after themselves !" frowned 
 her father, "and if they can t, maybe they ll 
 get another chance, who knows? But a dog, 
 poor little lover. All that dumb quivering
 
 88 OLD-DAD 
 
 miracle of love, trust, shrewdness, sinew, silk. 
 If he doesn t get the chance to live out the 
 measure of even his stingy little day " 
 
 "Yes, but Old-Dad," reasoned Daphne, "it 
 was Creep-Mouse s own idea wasn t it this 
 jumping off to chase the cat?" 
 
 "Hush your mouth!" said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 To cover the very real emotion that hid be 
 hind the irritability he began at once with 
 the stub of a pencil and the back of an en 
 velope to compose a telegram for the 
 stranger. 
 
 "Thanks," he wrote. "Please communicate 
 any news to J. Bretton, Hotel " 
 
 Then quite abruptly he jumped up and 
 started after the porter. "Why, what an 
 idiot I am!" he called back from the door 
 way. "We don t even know the chap s 
 name!" 
 
 From under lashes that seemed extraor 
 dinarily heavy to lift Daphne glanced up a 
 bit askance at her father. 
 
 "His name is Sheridan Kaire," she said. 
 
 Swinging sharply round in his tracks her 
 father stood eyeing her with frank astonish 
 ment.
 
 OLD-DAD 89 
 
 "Well, I d like to know," he demanded, 
 "how you happen to know what his name is?" 
 
 "He he sent me his card," said Daphne. 
 This time her eyelashes were quite unmistak 
 ably too heavy to lift. "At the hotel, I mean," 
 she faltered, "three or four nights ago. He 
 sent me orchids. He sent me candy. He sent 
 me " 
 
 "Do you mean," said her father, "that this 
 man has been following you for days?" 
 
 "Yes," said Daphne. 
 
 "And and what did you do with these 
 these offerings?" asked her father. 
 
 "Why, I didn t know just what to do with 
 them," stammered Daphne. "I was so fright 
 ened I I gave them to the bell boy." 
 
 "Do you mind telling me," quickened her 
 father, "just why if you were frightened or 
 troubled you wouldn t call upon your most 
 natural protector?" 
 
 Like the fluffy edges of two feather fans 
 Daphne s lashes fringed on her cheeks. 
 
 "This father and daughter game is such a 
 new one to me," she said. "I ve lived so much 
 with boarding school girls I I didn t know 
 fathers were people you told things to, I
 
 90 OLD-DAD 
 
 thought they were people that you kept 
 things from !" Very faintly around the tremu 
 lous young mouth, very briefly behind the 
 dark lashes a little smile signaled. 
 
 "Take off that gown!" ordered her father 
 quite abruptly, "and wrap yourself up in that 
 big coat of mine! And wait here till I come 
 back!" 
 
 "What time is it?" shivered Daphne. 
 
 "Four o clock," said her father and was 
 gone. 
 
 When he reappeared ten minutes later with 
 a yellow envelope flapping in his hand 
 Daphne was still standing just where he had 
 left her though obediently bundled up now 
 in the big tweed coat. 
 
 "We are all idiots!" affirmed her father. 
 "Everybody on the train is an idiot! Here s 
 this message been stuck up in the dining car 
 since nine o clock last night and no one had 
 wit enough to find us!" 
 
 "Is it from Creep-Mouse?" brightened 
 Daphne. 
 
 "Silly!" cried her father. "Creep-Mouse 
 didn t jump off till after midnight! This is 
 for you!"
 
 OLD-DAD 91 
 
 "For me?" questioned Daphne. With in 
 credulous ringers she took the yellow envelope 
 and slit it end from end. 
 
 "Why, it s from John," she whispered. 
 "John Burnarde Mr. John Burnarde." 
 Swaying a little where she stood she bent her 
 bright head to the message. Then white once 
 more to the lips she handed the page to her 
 father. 
 
 "Read it to me yourself," said her father. 
 "You know the man s accents and emphases 
 better than I do and it won t make any sense 
 to me unless I can hear the man s voice in it." 
 
 Once again the bright head bent to the 
 page. 
 
 "To Miss Daphne Bretton," began the young voice 
 as one quotes some precious-memoried phrase. "While 
 your blessed letter completely relieves mind it cannot 
 unfortunately relieve certain distressing complications 
 
 of " As though breaking its way through lips turned 
 
 suddenly to ice the sweet enunciation began quite pal 
 pably to crisp around the edges of its words. "Certain 
 distressing complications of this most unhappy situation. 
 Forwarding to you all love and confidence am yet tied 
 hand and foot against immediate action. Letter follows. 
 
 "T. n."
 
 92 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Which being interpreted?" questioned her 
 father. 
 
 "Which being interpreted," rallied 
 Daphne, "is academic for nothing doing. " 
 
 "U m m," mused her father, "and what 
 does T. D. stand for?" 
 
 " Teacher-Dear, " flushed Daphne. "It 
 was just a sort of a joke between us. I never 
 somehow quite got round to calling him 
 John. " 
 
 As though lost in the most abstract reflec 
 tion Jaffrey Bretton cocked his head on one 
 side. 
 
 "It s a good telegram," he said. 
 
 "Oh, a perfectly good telegram," acqui 
 esced Daphne. With a curiously old gesture 
 of finality she turned aside. 
 
 "So in this fashion ends passion," she mur 
 mured. 
 
 "What do you know about passion?" 
 quizzed her father. 
 
 "It rhymes with fashion, " said Daphne. 
 
 For an instant only from blue eyes to black 
 eyes and black eyes to blue again the baffling, 
 sphynxlike mystery of youth defied the baf 
 fling, sphynxlike mystery of experience.
 
 OLD-DAD 93 
 
 Then quite abruptly her father reached out 
 and cupped the little white quivering chin in 
 the hollow of his hand. 
 
 "What did you think your lover would do, 
 Daphne?" he smiled. "Tear down the college 
 chapel? Set fire to the gymnasium? Cast all 
 the faculty into dungeons and come riding 
 forth to claim you on a coal black charger 
 decked with crimson trappings?" 
 
 "No, of course not," said Daphne. 
 "Only " 
 
 "Yes, that s just it," hurried her father. 
 " Only boys do things like that! Only first- 
 love, the young, wild free-lance peddler 
 ready and able any moment, God bless him, 
 to dump down his whole tip-cartful of trinkets 
 at the feet of the first lady-fair who meets 
 his fancy! But a grown man, Daphne, is a 
 corporation! No end of other people s in 
 vestments tied up with him ! No end of rules 
 and obligations encompassing him about! 
 Truly, little girl, there are mighty few grown 
 men who could proffer honorable succor 
 even to their belovedest on such short 
 notice. Truly, little girl, taken all in all, 
 I think your John is doing pretty well.
 
 94 OLD-DAD 
 
 Maybe for all you know your John owes 
 money!" 
 
 "He does," nodded Daphne. "There were 
 some queer old editions of something he per 
 suaded the college to buy last year. They 
 turned out not to be genuine or something 
 and John feels he ought to refund on it." 
 
 "And maybe there s an old father some 
 where?" 
 
 "It s an old mother," quivered Daphne. 
 
 "And maybe the college president herself 
 didn t make things any too easy for him!" 
 
 "Miss Merriwayne s crazy about him," 
 quickened Daphne. "All the girls say so! 
 Everybody " 
 
 "U m m," mused her father. "Well, I 
 think you ll hear from him again!" 
 
 "Yes, I think I ll hear from him again," 
 monotoned Daphne. Quite suddenly her 
 teeth began to chatter and the eyes that lifted 
 to his were like the eyes of a frightened fawn. 
 
 "I feel so little," she whispered. "Even in 
 this big coat I feel so little and so cold! I 
 never sat in anybody s lap," she stammered 
 desperately, "and and as long as you didn t 
 like my my mother I don t suppose you ve
 
 OLD-DAD 95 
 
 ever held anybody in yours. But perhaps 
 
 maybe " With a little smothered cry her 
 
 hands crept up to her father s shoulders. 
 "Oh, if you just could hold me till breakfast 
 time!" she begged, "or just till the coffee s 
 ready." 
 
 Flushing like an embarrassed school-boy 
 her father caught her up in his arms and sank 
 back into the narrow angular corner of plush 
 and wood with the little unfamiliar form 
 snuggled close on his breast. 
 
 "Why why, you don t weigh anything!" 
 he faltered. 
 
 "No, I m not as fat as I was last week," 
 conceded Daphne. Like a puppy dog settling 
 down for a nap she stirred once or twice in 
 her nest. "Do you think of any little song 
 you could sing?" she asked. 
 
 "Nothing except: 
 
 Fifteen men on a dead man s chest 
 Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum ! " 
 
 began her father in a cheerful tenor. 
 
 "No, I wouldn t care for that," sighed 
 Daphne.
 
 96 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Why, it s from Stevenson himself!" argued 
 her father. 
 
 "Never mind," snuggled Daphne. "Maybe 
 I can think of one myself." 
 
 Peering down a moment later through 
 the bright tickly blur of her hair her 
 father noticed suddenly that her lips were 
 moving. 
 
 "Oh, you re not praying, are you?" he 
 squirmed. "Oh, I do hope you re not one of 
 those people who makes his spiritual toilet 
 in public! Dear me! Dear me! To brush 
 your soul night and morning is no more, of 
 course, than any neat person would do. But 
 in public " 
 
 "I wasn t praying," said Daphne. "I was 
 making a little poem." 
 
 "You seem to be rather prone to make little 
 poems," murmured her father. 
 
 "Would you like to hear this one?" offered 
 Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, I don t mind," said her father. 
 
 "All right," quivered Daphne. "It s about 
 Love." 
 
 "So I supposed," mused her father. 
 
 "And death," confided Daphne.
 
 OLD-DAD 97 
 
 "I wouldn t wonder at all," admitted her 
 father. 
 
 "And its name?" puzzled Daphne. "Oh, 
 I guess it hasn t any name! It just begins! 
 This is it : 
 
 Oh, the little rose that died, 
 How it tried, oh, how it tried 
 Just to grow a little stronger, 
 Just to live a little longer, 
 Snatching sunshine, sipping rain 
 Till the June should come again! 
 Didn t want to be a tree, 
 Didn t envy you or me, 
 Asked no favor ere life s close 
 But the chance to be a rose, 
 Oh, that little rose that died, 
 How it tried ! Oh, how it tried ! " 
 
 "U m m," mused her father. "But I 
 thought you said it was about Love. This 
 is all about roses. " 
 
 "But it is about Love! " flared Daphne. 
 "The rose part is just just figurative! You 
 have to do that in poetry! Make most every 
 thing figurative, or else it wouldn t be be 
 delicate." Quite palpably her upper lip be 
 gan to tremble. "Why, didn t you like it?"
 
 98 OLD-DAD 
 
 she whispered. "Didn t you like it at all, I 
 mean?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," hurried her father, "I liked it 
 very much, oh very! Though personally on 
 these crape-y poems I must confess I like 
 some jolly refrain added like Yo-ho and a 
 bottle of rum! " 
 
 "Why Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne. Sit 
 ting bolt upright, her cheeks blazing, she 
 stared aghast at him. 
 
 "Oh, of course, you ve never been in love!" 
 she cried. "But I tell you when you re sitting 
 all alone with your love-secret in a whole 
 recitation roomful of girls and and he 
 comes in so lithe so beautiful and smiles 
 through everybody right at you and and 
 then begins to read it s Shakespeare, you 
 know 
 
 How like a winter hath my absence been 
 From Thee 
 
 Oh, Old-Dad, if you could only hear him 
 read!" 
 
 Before the sudden twinkle in her father s 
 eyes she reverted equally suddenly into sheer
 
 OLD-DAD 99 
 
 childishness again and began to pound him 
 quite familiarly with her small fists. 
 
 "Oh, you re just teasing me!" she laughed. 
 "You naughty naughty Old-Dad! Oh, 
 very well then, here s another poem for you! 
 You ll love this one! I made it up last night 
 It s all about you !" 
 
 "Shoot!" said her father. 
 
 Re-dramatized in that single instant to the 
 role of a poet she straightened up very 
 formally. Back to her breast crept the quiver 
 ing little hands. Her eyes were blurred with 
 tears. "The name of this poem," she said, 
 "is The Word that God Forgot to Make/ 
 But if that s too long I could, of course, call 
 it just The Miracle. See what you think. 
 
 Out of panic and pain, out of unspeakable disaster, 
 
 (Oh rhyme, oh rune, oh rhythm itself, come faster, come 
 
 faster!) 
 
 Out of all this I say 
 Fate has found me my father! 
 But where? Where? In earth or air? 
 From sky to sea? From you to me? 
 Where shall I find a rhyme for "father"? 
 I whose only speech is rhyme, I who have so little time. 
 How can I in other ways sound my Daddy s glorious 
 
 praise ? 
 Beauty, Splendor, Brains, Perfection" 1
 
 100 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Oh, I say!" wriggled her father. "Is that 
 all?" 
 
 Wilting down on his breast again he heard 
 her swallow pretty hard several times before 
 her muffled answer came. 
 
 "It s it s all," she said, "except, of course, 
 the refrain ( Yo-ho, etc." 
 
 Chuckling softly to himself for a moment 
 her father sat staring off across the crown of 
 her head at the shifting car-window landscape 
 of orange groves, palm trees, and pine. 
 
 "Couldn t you pat me a little?" came the 
 sweet, muffled voice again. 
 
 "I darsn t," said her father. "If I should 
 unclasp a single hand you d go bumpety-bump 
 on the floor." 
 
 "O h," sighed Daphne, "but couldn t you 
 even pat me with your voice?" 
 
 " Tat you with my voice? " puzzled her 
 father. With a quiver of muscles his strong 
 arms tightened round her. "Why, you poor 
 baby," he cried, "you poor lonesome little 
 kiddie! You " 
 
 "Why does everybody think I m so little?" 
 protested Daphne. With considerable effort 
 she struggled up again, "You and John
 
 OLD-DAD 101 
 
 Burnarde and the and the Kissing Man! 
 Every one of you called me ( a baby. But 
 that Wiltoner boy at the dance that night," 
 she faltered, "he treated me as though I was 
 quite grown up and real. Right in the midst 
 of a dance it was he asked me about bread 
 machines. Asked my advice about bread 
 machines, I mean! And I loved it!" 
 
 "Did you ever see a bread machine?" 
 quizzed her father. 
 
 "N o," admitted Daphne, "but it sounds 
 so real ! But what I want to know," she hur 
 ried on quite irrelevantly, "is about this place 
 this wild, desert-islandy sort of place that 
 we re going to. Will that seem real?" 
 
 "Very real," promised her father. 
 
 "Tents?" questioned Daphne. 
 
 "Yes," said her father. 
 
 "What will there be to eat?" brightened 
 Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, canned goods," shrugged her father, 
 "and warm oranges and grape-fruit, and 
 heaps of salt pork, of course, and all the fresh 
 fish we have strength to land Spanish mack 
 erel, sea trout, sharks." 
 
 "Not sharks?" thrilled Daphne.
 
 102 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Ah, of course, we don t have to eat them," 
 confessed her father. 
 
 "And people?" wilted Daphne again. 
 "Will there have to be people?" 
 
 "Oh, only four or five probably," laughed 
 her father, "and even those usually are scat 
 tered twenty-five or fifty miles apart. Oh, of 
 course, now and then," he admitted in all 
 honesty, "some gay Northern houseboat comes 
 floating by. But mostly somehow, all that 
 part of the land, or rather of the water, seems 
 inhabited by people who have made mistakes 
 made real mistakes, I mean argued not 
 wisely but too well with their mothers-in- 
 law, or overdrawn their bank accounts with 
 the butt of a pistol rather than with the point 
 of a pen, or had a bit of rough play some 
 where upstate with an over-sensitive sheriff. 
 We re going to have, for instance, a Lost 
 Man for a cook. Nice distinguished look 
 ing old city-spoken derelict who can t remem 
 ber who he is, so most happily for him he 
 can t remember what his mistake was. And 
 on the next key just below us, twenty miles 
 or so, there s an outlaw who killed two 
 revenue officers up North in Alabama some-
 
 OLD-DAD 103 
 
 where. And inland just behind us there s a 
 rather good-looking woman who s gone batty 
 on the subject of red. Can t bear red, it 
 seems, and has come down there to wallow 
 her nerves in the all-green jungle." 
 
 Big and dark and blue, Daphne widened 
 her eyes to her father s. 
 
 "You re not fooling any, Old-Dad?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Not fooling any," said her father. 
 
 Blackly for an instant the heavy lashes 
 shadowed down across the delicately tinted 
 cheeks. Then quite abruptly a real smile 
 flashed from eyes to lips. 
 
 "Oh, Old-Dad!" cried Daphne. "Would 
 you mind if I touched your beautiful 
 hair?" 
 
 "Oh, shucks!" dodged her father. 
 
 But Daphne s little hands had already 
 reached their goal. 
 
 "Oh, Old-Dad how soft!" she gloated. 
 "How white! How thick! But, oh goodness 
 isn t it hot?" 
 
 "On the contrary," smiled her father with 
 a slightly twisted eyebrow. "On the con 
 trary it is an Ice Cap prescribed by Fate for
 
 104 OLD-DAD 
 
 what has doubtless been an over-feverish 
 youth." 
 
 Solemnly for an instant Daphne considered 
 the answer. 
 
 "Which being interpreted?" she questioned. 
 
 With a little sharp catch of his breath her 
 father caught her suddenly back to his breast. 
 
 "Which being interpreted," he laughed, 
 
 "means : 
 
 Didn t want to be a freak, 
 Had no hunch to sing or speak, 
 Couldn t be clever if he tried, 
 So have it dyed ! Oh, have it dyed ! "
 
 PART II
 
 VERY man, once in his lifetime," 
 gloated Jaffrey Bretton, "has craved 
 the adventurous experience of being 
 marooned on a coral island with a beautiful 
 lady!" 
 
 From eyes that brooded only too soberly on 
 the bright tropic scene all around her, 
 Daphne shot back a faintly amused and 
 frankly deprecatory smile. 
 
 "Oh, of course I meant an unrelated beau 
 tiful lady, " murmured her father. 
 
 As swiftly as it had come the faint smile 
 vanished again. 
 
 Shrugging the hot salt and sand from his 
 blue-jersied shoulders her father gathered his 
 bare brown knees into the curve of his bare 
 brown arms and surveyed her suddenly with 
 a most ferocious frown. 
 
 "Daphne," he ordered, "never inhale your 
 smile! Nicotine itself it no more injurious 
 to one s in ards than is an inhaled smile," 
 
 107
 
 108 OLD-DAD 
 
 With a sweep of the hand he seemed in that 
 single moment to include the whole shining 
 universe in the measure of his reproach. 
 "Even with all this," he demanded, "can t 
 you be happy any?" 
 
 Certainly no one could have denied that it 
 was a shining universe! 
 
 Like a cake of white soap splashing in a 
 pan of bluing, the little island gleamed in the 
 Gulf ! Whiteness beyond your wildest dreams 
 of whiteness! Blueness beyond your wildest 
 dreams of blueness! Pearl, azure, indigo, 
 turquoise, ultramarine all sizzling together 
 in the merciless sun! 
 
 Green there was too, of course the vivid, 
 clattering green of majestic cocoanut palms, 
 the virescent flare of beech-grass, the crisp 
 fan of scrub palmetto, and always the great, 
 glossy mangrove trees rearing like giant 
 laurel bushes in the dark, dustless splendor. 
 But green in the Gulf, somehow, always 
 seems like man s idea, or woman s a sheer 
 after-thought, as it were, of shade or trim 
 mings. All -the blue gulf wants is glare 
 and the eternal chance to grind pale rain 
 bow-tinted shells into white sand!
 
 OLD-DAD 109 
 
 Cuddled to the white sand but hiding from 
 the glare, Jaffrey Bretton lolled in the pale 
 shadow of an old wreck, staring out into the 
 radiance. Half a rod away from him in a 
 slim blue swimming suit that exactly matched 
 his own, Daphne lay basking in her own sand 
 nest. 
 
 Nothing else on land or sea dozed or dallied 
 because of the heat. 
 
 "Slam Bang Bang" for a glistening 
 mile the big billows boomed and roared on the 
 beach. Fantastic as a shadow with a shine to 
 it, the gray sharks slashed and reslashed 
 through the churning tide! High overhead 
 in inestimable thousands white gulls furled 
 and feathered in ecstatic maneuver! Far on 
 the outer reef bright Spanish mackerel leaped 
 in the sun! And startlingly outlined across 
 the horizon, as though in deliberate mockery 
 of all man s futile efforts to walk on the 
 water, a gigantic kite-shaped whipperee went 
 reeling tipsily from wave to wave! 
 
 With a gasp of almost pagan joy Jaffrey 
 Bretton repeated his question. 
 
 "Even with all this," he insisted, "can t you 
 be happy any?"
 
 110 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Oh, Old-Dad," shivered Daphne, "you 
 know just as well as I do that I would be 
 perfectly happy if only I could forget!" 
 
 "Forget what?" said her father. 
 
 "Forget the hideous thing the President 
 called me!" quivered Daphne. "Forget that 
 that awful letter my room-mate s mother 
 wrote me! . . . Forget the newspapers! . . . 
 Forget forget everything*" 
 
 With a shrug of his shoulders, Jaffrey Bret- 
 ton gestured back to the camp fire at the edge 
 of the cactus thicket where, crouched before 
 the fragrant coffee pot in a scarecrow suit 
 of gay-colored ginghams, a weirdly majestic 
 looking old man with long scraggly hair and 
 sharply aquiline features added the one tragic 
 note to the scene, 
 
 "Lost Man has forgotten everything, 
 he confided, a bit dryly. 
 
 "Forgotten everything?" repeated Daphne. 
 
 "Everything except how to make coffee," 
 said her father, "or fry a bit of fish now and 
 then! Forgotten who he is, I mean! For 
 gotten who he was! Forgotten even who he 
 intends to be! That s rather the trouble, it 
 seems, with this forgetting business! When
 
 OLD-DAD 111 
 
 you once start out to forget there doesn t 
 seem to be any special discrimination about 
 it! Your father s name, the location of your 
 banker, the price of turnips, the esthetic value 
 of brushing your hair all wiped out of ex 
 istence by a single slop of the same sponge!" 
 
 "Yes, but Old-Dad " parried Daphne. 
 
 With a smile that was almost caressing her 
 father narrowed his gaze once more to the 
 tragic old figure. 
 
 "Hanged if I don t think the old chap 
 would die for me!" he attested. "But nothing 
 on earth, it seems, could make him remember 
 me ! Seventy years old and seventy miles from 
 a fish hook and seventy times battier than 
 batty! That s the way I found him five or 
 six years ago!" 
 
 "Yes, but where did you find him?" wak 
 ened Daphne. "How ever did you happen 
 to find him?" 
 
 "Well, if the truth must be told," said her 
 father, "I was hunting rather zealously at the 
 moment for a pink curlew. It is against the 
 law, I believe, to be hunting overzealously 
 for a pink curlew. Way up one of those 
 tortuous green waterways it was ! An absolute
 
 112 OLD-DAD 
 
 maze of mangrove islands! No conceivable 
 footing, you understand, except that greit 
 bare fretwork of mangrove roots clawing 
 down into the water ! And every separate way 
 you stared was just another dank green tun 
 nel! Glossy leaves slapping along the sides 
 of your canoe, dove-gray curlews blocking out 
 the sky, alligators guzzling in every slimy 
 bog hole! Had a little chunk of dry land, 
 the old chap did, just about the size and 
 substantiality of a crumpled-up newspaper, 
 and a wigwam thatched like a cannibal hut 
 with palm leaf fans! And there he lay in the 
 damp and the heat and the buzz, too weak 
 any longer to raise his head, but swearing like 
 a trooper because in some inexplicable way 
 he had missed the trading boat that chugged 
 along his coast line every three months or so. 
 For days and days, I suppose, he had rowed 
 laboriously down to the mouth of the pass 
 and leaned on his oars from dawn to dusk 
 raking that blue horizon line for rice and 
 white bacon/ and coffee and matches and 
 life. It wasn t just that he was fastidious, 
 you know ! Raw curlew or raw jewfish would 
 have tasted like pudding to him by then!
 
 OLD-DAD 113 
 
 But something seemed to have happened to 
 his shotgun and his last fish hook rot, I 
 suppose. Anyway, from grass floor to peak 
 of that rattling palm-leaf hut there wasn t a 
 single thing left but damp and heat and 
 buzz! Yet somewhere up in the North, I 
 suppose, or the East or the West, there s a 
 baffled little family group still arguing round 
 the evening lamp or over the morning por 
 ridge: Whatever in the world became of 
 Father? Wrecked by a typhoon or a bank 
 defalcation, swerved from some perfectly 
 sober path by the phantasia of a headache 
 powder, driven to frenzy by the pattern of 
 his dining-room wall paper Whatever in 
 the world became of Father? 
 
 "Well, whatever did?" quickened Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, we chucked him into our canoe," said 
 Jaffrey Bretton, "and took him back to the 
 yacht, and from the yacht in due time to this 
 same little coraL island. And every quarter 
 now, when the trading boat skirts the coast, 
 it rather plans, I think, to throw a box of 
 fodder ashore at the entrance to Lost Man s 
 pass whether Lost Man himself is in sight 
 or not. And usually in the winter when I
 
 114 OLD-DAD 
 
 come down I send a Seminole Indian back 
 into that mad green maze to find him. No 
 one but an Indian could find him, I imagine. 
 And always, without the slightest question or 
 demur, Lost Man comes and cooks for me. 
 Yet never once, I think, has he shown a flicker 
 of recognition beyond staring up bewilderedly 
 through every first brew of camp coffee to 
 inquire, Say, boss, have I ever cooked 
 for you before? 
 
 "Oh, but Old-Dad!" cried Daphne. 
 "Don t you think we ought to try and take 
 him home?" 
 
 "Home to what?" frowned her father. 
 With a sudden glance of a lover his eyes re- 
 swept the turquoise-colored tide. "Wouldn t 
 any man," he questioned, "rather die on the 
 Spanish Main than live in an asylum? 
 Also, incidentally," he murmured, "when a 
 man has once formed the Seminole Indian 
 sort of habit of living in a gay gingham 
 jumper with or without trousers he doesn t 
 slip over-easily, you understand, into linen 
 collars again." 
 
 "Yes, but what about his family?" protested
 
 OLD-DAD 115 
 
 Daphne, "and the awful tragedy of being 
 lost? 1 
 
 "God knows!" said her father. "But the 
 awful tragedy of being lost is considerably 
 less sometimes, I fancy, than the awful 
 tragedy of being found ! Eveiry human catas 
 trophe makes a lot of new problems of course 
 but it cancels, I imagine, just as many old 
 ones. By land or sea there never was any 
 smash-up yet, I suppose, that didn t release 
 some poor soul with the cry, Now, I ll never 
 have to tell! Now, they ll never need to 
 know! Now, we ll never have to pay! 
 People who wondered how they could meet 
 the coming day just didn t have to, that s 
 all! And lads like our old friend here, Kid 
 die, are pretty apt to represent somebody s 
 canceled problem. And anyway" (for 
 comedy instead of tragedy he restaged his 
 whole face suddenly by the shift of a single 
 eyebrow), "and anyway, Kiddie," he laughed, 
 "it must simplify life pretty considerably to 
 forget everything in it except how to cook the 
 one thing you like best! In your own case, 
 for instance, what will you choose? Guava 
 jelly? Or fudge?"
 
 116 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Guava jelly and fudge nothing!" flared 
 Daphne. In another instant she was on her 
 feet and speeding toward Lost Man. 
 
 "Whatever you do don t start him swear 
 ing!" shouted her father. "Truly, I couldn t 
 advise it!" 
 
 But heedless of everything except the in 
 tolerable mystery, Daphne was already at the 
 camp fire poised like a slim wand of blue 
 larkspur over the old man s crouching hulk. 
 
 "Must at least have been a Northerner 
 once!" called her father, "or he d never stand 
 the shock of that bathing suit!" 
 
 Shrugging the raillery aside Daphne 
 clutched out with desperate intensity at the 
 old man s multicolored shoulder. 
 
 "Lost Man!" she flamed, "it s perfectly 
 absurd for you to remember a silly little thing 
 like how to make coffee and forget a great 
 big important one like who you are! It 
 doesn t make sense, I tell you? You must re 
 member who you are! You must! You must! 
 Lost Man, what is your name?" 
 
 " Lost Man, " answered the old chap, as 
 though it had been Smith.
 
 OLD-DAD 117 
 
 "Yes, but where do you live?" cried 
 Daphne. 
 
 "Here," said Lost Man. 
 
 "Yes, but after you leave here where do 
 you go?" persisted Daphne. 
 
 "There," said Lost Man. 
 
 With a little wail of despair Daphne 
 pointed back toward her father. 
 
 "What is that man s name?" she demanded. 
 
 "It doesn t matter," said Lost Man. "He 
 has such a good face." 
 
 "Yes, but what s my name?" giggled 
 Daphne. 
 
 As though just a little bit wearied by the 
 catechism Lost Man resumed his coffee drink 
 ing. 
 
 "Everything is all the same," he said. 
 
 "But I tell you I won t be an All the 
 Same! " cried Daphne. "My name is 
 Daphne! D-a-p-h-n-e! Daphne! Remem 
 ber it now!" she admonished him. "You ve 
 simply got to remember something! . . . 
 Daphne! Daphne! Daphne!" 
 
 With a curious little chuckle and a sudden 
 cock of his head as though trying to locate 
 the source of so unfamiliar a sound, Lost Man
 
 118 OLD-DAD 
 
 reached out for the great long-handled camp 
 spider and began quite unexpectedly to thrum 
 it like a banjo, as, shaking his shaggy mane 
 out of his eyes, he burst into song: 
 
 "Diaphenia, like a daffadown dilly, 
 White as the sun, fair as the lily, 
 Heigho Heigho " 
 
 With a tiny scream Daphne swung back to 
 ward her father. 
 
 "Why, Old-Dad!" she cried. "He s calling 
 me Diaphenia! It s an old, old song! Oh, 
 an awfully old, old English song! It s in the 
 Golden Treasury! You learn it in college! 
 You never in the world would know it if you 
 hadn t been to college!" 
 
 "Well, switch him back to the swearing if 
 you d like it better!" called her father. But 
 already, with a leap and a run, he was on his 
 way to prove the phenomenon with his own 
 ears and eyes. 
 
 Quaveringly, but with determinate galv 
 lantry, Lost Man s guttural old voice carried 
 the tuneful memory. 
 
 "Diaphenia like to all things blessed, 
 When all thy praises are expressed, 
 Heigh-o Heigh-o."
 
 OLD-DAD 119 
 
 The scream that Daphne gave now scared 
 even Lost Man out of his next line. 
 
 "Oh, I ve thought of something perfectly 
 wonderful!" she cried, and speeding into her 
 tent returned with a large shining mirror 
 clasped close in her arms. "Oh, you thought 
 I was silly to bring it!" she admonished her 
 father, "but maybe I wasn t so silly, after all! 
 Maybe I m going to work a miracle with it! 
 Maybe this is the psychological moment!" 
 Still with the mirrored surface gleaming from 
 her like a bright breastplate she advanced 
 slowly toward Lost Man till every inch of 
 the quicksilver had taken its merciless toll of 
 the scarecrow figure before it. "Now, Lost 
 Man!" she triumphed, "look close! Look 
 close! . . . Who are you?" 
 
 As indifferently as an animal Lost Man 
 gazed into the mirror for an instant. Then, 
 quite suddenly, with his neck yanked oddly 
 forward, he stared direct into the reflection 
 and staggered to his feet. Dumb with some 
 inexplicable emotion he stood staring for a 
 breathless moment from Jaffrey Bretton s 
 utterly expressionless face to Daphne s ex- 
 Cited eyes. Then, very deliberately the tirj
 
 120 OLD-DAD 
 
 of his tongue crept out to moisten his sun- 
 parched lips. 
 
 "Do I look like that?" he pointed. 
 
 "Yes, I m afraid you do," admitted Daphne 
 in all honesty. 
 
 With a gasp like the gasp of a person 
 strangling, Lost Man raised his arms to 
 heaven. "My God! My God!" he cried, "I 
 thought I was young!" And swinging 
 sharply around he ran madly down the white 
 beach into the white surf and out through the 
 white surf into the blue churn and chop be 
 yond, as though the horizon line itself was 
 his ultimate goal. Outward through the in 
 digo depths in long, slow, fiercely powerful 
 strokes, floundering half erect through azure- 
 colored shoals, merging for interminable 
 seconds with the wild eddy and roar of far 
 outlying breakers, silhouetted for one brief 
 fantastic moment standing ankle-deep on the 
 crest of a hidden sand bar with white gulls 
 circling in a living halo around his head 
 he passed, half whipperee, half miracle-man 
 into the unfathomable glare. 
 
 "Oh, Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne, "won t he 
 be drowned?"
 
 OLD-DAD 121 
 
 More shaken than he liked to show, Jaffrey 
 Bretton stooped for an instant to brush a tickle 
 of imaginary sand from his instep. 
 
 "Not in a thousand years," he said, "but at 
 least he will be washed." 
 
 At some unfamiliar timbre of the voice 
 Daphne crept timidly to him. 
 
 "Oh, Old-Dad," she faltered, "you don t 
 really suppose, do you, that he s been lost ever 
 since he was young?" 
 
 "God knows," said Jaffrey Bretton. "Only, 
 next time you have a wonderful idea, Kiddie, 
 keep it muzzled for a day or two until you 
 make sure it won t bite." 
 
 "Oh, but Old-Dad!" quivered Daphne, "I 
 
 I didn t mean to hurt him! Truly, I didn t! 
 j 
 
 "You didn t hurt him," said her father. 
 "Like all merciful executions, he never knew 
 what hit him !" With a gesture frankly romp- 
 ish he reached out and grabbed Daphne by 
 her wrist. "Come on, Kiddie!" he chal 
 lenged, "let s have a race up the beach!" 
 
 By the time the race was over there wasn t 
 enough breath left in either of them to talk 
 about anything. Merged in the sand again,
 
 122 OLD-DAD 
 
 scorched by the sun, fanned by a great clattery 
 clump of scrub palmetto, they curled up in 
 half a shadow and fell asleep. 
 
 It was Jaffrey Bretton who woke first. 
 
 "Poor devil," was the first phrase on his 
 lips. 
 
 "Who?" yawned Daphne. 
 
 "I !" said her father quite quickly. "I was 
 worrying about my dog." 
 
 "O h," yawned Daphne. 
 
 "Oh yourself!" yawned her father. 
 
 It was Daphne who woke first the next time, 
 and she woke with her fingers clutching hard 
 into her father s startled shoulder. 
 
 "Oh, Old-Dad !" she cried. "There s a lady 
 walking on my beach !" 
 
 Heavy with sleep, JafTrey Bretton strug 
 gled laboriously upward and shook his white 
 hair from his eyes just in time to face the 
 intruder as she rounded the nearest cactus 
 thicket. 
 
 "Why why good afternoon, Lady-Walk- 
 ing-on-our-Beach!" he said. 
 
 The scream that the lady gave, though dis 
 tinctly shrill was yet quite unmistakably a
 
 OLD-DAD 123 
 
 khaki scream, the scream, as it were, of a 
 sportswoman, a mere matter of atavism only. 
 
 "Oh! How you startled me!" she cried. 
 
 It was at least very becoming to the lady 
 to be startled, though all around the edges 
 of the frank confession her lips showed still 
 their stark, atavic pallor, and the clever gray 
 eyes that searched the two blue-jersied figures 
 before her were rather extravagantly dilated. 
 
 "Is is this Martha s Island?" she ques 
 tioned just a little bit abruptly. 
 
 "It is not!" said Jaffrey Bretton with some 
 coldness. "Martha is a crazy lady. Do we 
 look to you like crazy ladies?" 
 
 "Oh, no of course not," flushed the in 
 truder. "Only only it is so awfully hard 
 sometimes to place people without their 
 clothes." 
 
 "Without their clothes?" flared Daphne. 
 "Why these arc our clothes! Our very own 
 clothes!" As though in indisputable proof of 
 the assertion she edged even closer to her 
 father s side and began to stroke such shoulder 
 and such sleeve as her father s swimming suit 
 boasted. 
 
 But, gentle as the gesture was, it only served
 
 124 OLD-DAD 
 
 somehow to increase the Intruding Lady s 
 nervousness. 
 
 "Why of course I I didn t mean that," 
 she stammered. "It s only that that running 
 
 on you so suddenly the way I did, I " 
 
 With a gesture of sheer helplessness she threw 
 out her hands. "Well, there are so many 
 queer people down here!" she cried. "Fan 
 atics and fruit growers and runaway 
 people and and fanatics!" In an access of 
 bewilderment her glance swept out across 
 Daphne s slim, nymph-like loveliness to the 
 wild island scene all around them, and back 
 again to Jaffrey Bretton s distinctly sophisti 
 cated eyes. "For all I know," she affirmed 
 with a palpable effort at lightness, "you may 
 be fugitives from justice!" 
 
 "Call us rather fugitives from injustice," 
 bowed Jaffrey Bretton, with the faintest pos 
 sible smile. 
 
 Tugging at the brim of her brown khaki 
 hat, fumbling at the collar of her brown 
 khaki shirt, patting at the flare of her brown 
 khaki skirt, the Intruding Lady began very 
 suddenly to tinker with her personal an- 
 pearance.
 
 OLD-DAD 125 
 
 "Now, isn t that funny?" jerked Daphne. 
 "Whenever my father smiles, smiles like that, 
 I mean so faint, so twinkly every woman 
 in sight except myself begins to straighten her 
 hat and 
 
 "Hush such nonsense!" ordered her father. 
 
 But the Intruding Lady, without showing 
 an atom of resentment, wilted right down in 
 the hot sands and began to laugh. It was a 
 clever laugh, too, though still just a little bit 
 wobbly round its edges. 
 
 "Please excuse me for being so hysterical," 
 she begged. "But it s been such a queer day I 
 And I ve just had such a dreadful fright I 
 hardly know who s crazy and who isn t!" 
 
 "A fright?" deprecated Jaffrey Bretton 
 with increasing formality. 
 
 "Yes! Coming ashore just now," cried the 
 Intruding Lady, "I thought I saw a man 
 walking on the water! Way out in the Gulf 
 it was! Almost a mile I should think! But 
 when I looked again it was a fish!" Very 
 faintly, but none the less palpably her teeth 
 began to chatter. "But when 1 looked again 
 it was a man! It was!" 
 
 "Nothing at all to be alarmed about," in-
 
 326 OLD-DAD 
 
 terposed Jaffrey Bretton quickly; "it was just 
 <aur butler doing his calisthenics." 
 
 "Your butler?" stammered the Intruding 
 Lady. 
 
 "Yes you have probably noticed that the 
 water is exceedingly thin in spots" then 
 with a precipitate return of his manners 
 Jaffrey Bretton waved her toward the green- 
 shadowed sand nest which he had just vacated. 
 
 "Have a shade, madam!" he begged her. 
 "You seem quite out of breath! And as 
 though you had been running!" 
 
 "Running?" rallied the lady. "I have been 
 galloping!" Rather cautiously, but none the 
 less gratefully, she edged her way into the 
 wavy green shadow. "And even after I got 
 ashore," she confided, "I met such queer 
 things on the beach! Oh, pelicans, I mean," 
 she added hastily, "and fiddler crabs ! Crowds 
 and crowds of " 
 
 "We shall have to have a traffic cop," 
 mused Jaffrey Bretton. But even as he mused 
 he stood with one hand shading his eyes while 
 he raked the vacant horizon line for some 
 thing that seemed to perplex him. 
 
 "When you spoke of coming ashore just
 
 OLD-DAD 127 
 
 now," he turned and asked the lady quite ab 
 ruptly, "just what, may I ask, were you on?" 
 
 "I was on a on a honeymoon," said the 
 lady. 
 
 "A honeymoon?" jumped Daphne. 
 
 "And being inexpressibly bored," said the 
 lady, "I " 
 
 "You are frank, to say the least," mur 
 mured Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 " Frank? " said the lady. "I was des 
 perate! So when the others took all the 
 launches to go off and hunt for some kind of 
 a fish, a sail fish I think it was, I pretended 
 that I had a headache and stayed behind in 
 my cabin, and the first moment even the en 
 gineer was out of sight I just slipped into 
 the canoe and paddled ashore. Having 
 heard, you see," explained the lady, "about 
 all the queer people hidden away on some of 
 these islands it just occurred to me, you see, 
 that " 
 
 "All of which is very interesting, of 
 course," said JafTrey Bretton, "but honor com 
 pels me to advance a few little observations 
 of my own. Yonder, through that maze of 
 gulls," he pointed, "I note the only smoke on
 
 128 OLD-DAD 
 
 the horizon which leads me to infer that, 
 having camouflaged your absence not only 
 wisely but too well, the yacht and bridegroom 
 in question are already steaming southward 
 at a very reasonable mileage. For the Carib 
 bean, doubtless? Always have I understood 
 that the Caribbean was a really rather re 
 markable place for honeymoons!" 
 
 But already, with a little choking gasp, the 
 Intruding Lady was on her feet staring fran 
 tically in every direction. Her face was 
 horridly white. 
 
 "Quick!" she cried. "We must get the 
 canoe and try to catch them!" 
 
 "Your knowledge of nautical matters is 
 charming," bowed JarTrey Bretton. "But 
 though one may often put to sea in a canoe 
 he does not readily put to Gulf. The un 
 fortunate typhoonish treachery of these 
 waters, the peculiarly hoydenish habits of 
 sharks, the " 
 
 "We must get the canoe!" insisted the 
 lady. 
 
 "Why, how silly!" roused Daphne. "Why, 
 it would take weeks and weeks !" 
 
 "And in this impetuous climate," depre-
 
 OLD-DAD 129 
 
 cated her father, "how dispiriting to arrive 
 at last only to find that the recreant bride 
 groom had already taken unto himself another 
 bride." 
 
 "Your levity is quite uncalled for," 
 frowned the lady. "When I think of the 
 anxiety I have caused my party the commo 
 tion there will be on board the yacht as soon 
 as my absence is discovered, the " 
 
 "Oh, of course we could advertise," sug 
 gested Jaffrey Bretton cheerfully, "stating the 
 latitude and longitude, and the more ex 
 plicit directions that it s the island that almost 
 always has eleven pelicans sitting on the sand 
 bar. And we could train our butler, I sup 
 pose, to swim out from time to time to the 
 passing yachts and houseboats with a placard 
 in his mouth saying, Found: A Brown Khaki 
 Lady. But unless we have a little more defi 
 nite identification " he turned and ad 
 dressed the lady with some incisiveness. 
 
 In spite of herself and quite inexplainably 
 the lady began to smile. Simultaneously with 
 the smile she unwound the brown veil from 
 her brown hat, and snatching off the hat itself 
 bared her bright head to the breeze.
 
 130 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Just mention that I have red hair," she 
 said. "Names are altogether too easily as 
 sumed to be practical for identification pur 
 poses." 
 
 "Yet more ladies, I suppose," murmured 
 Jaffrey Bretton, "travel under assumed hair 
 than under assumed names." 
 
 "Why, Old-Dad!" protested Daphne. In 
 a sudden flare of interest her whole attention 
 focused on the lady. "My! but your hair is 
 red!" she cried. "And such heaps of it! 
 Why, goodness!" she stammered, "you re al 
 most as young as I am!" 
 
 "It s delightful of you to think so," smiled 
 the lady. "But even you, I m afraid, will 
 never rate me as young as this this your 
 father, was it, you said?" 
 
 "I don t quite understand what you mean?" 
 sobered Daphne. 
 
 "People almost never understand what ladies 
 mean," said her father. "But the inference 
 is, of course, that this one refers at the moment 
 to my somewhat callow conversation. How 
 ever," he continued, perfectly blithely, "I see 
 no reason why we shouldn t all be very happy 
 together until such time at least as my owa
 
 OLD-DAD 131 
 
 launch returns with its remodeled engine. 
 But meanwhile when did you eat last?" he 
 turned abruptly to ask the lady with sincere 
 concern. 
 
 "Last night," conceded the lady. "Truly I 
 did have a bit of a headache." 
 
 "Our grapefruit are not iced," mused Jaf- 
 frey Bretton, "and we pour our butter from 
 a pitcher which is not the custom, of course, 
 on Gulf-going yachts but as camp food 
 
 goes " With a little swift smile he 
 
 reached out his hand to Daphne and drew 
 her to her feet. "Dinner is served, ladies!" 
 he said, and started up the beach. 
 
 Still holding tightly to one hand Daphne 
 followed half a step behind him. 
 
 "The sun s so hot and the sand s so thick 
 and the shells are so sharp," she called back 
 cordially to the Intruding Lady, "you d find 
 it heaps easier, too, if you d take Old-Dad s 
 other hand!" 
 
 "No, I thank you!" said the Intruding 
 Lady, but plowed along valiantly after them. 
 
 The sun was hot! The sand was thick! 
 The shells were very sharp! No shade for 
 almost a mile except the occasional lattice-
 
 132 OLD-DAD 
 
 like flicker of a sea gull s flight! But close at 
 their side the Blue Gulf pounded and splashed 
 in ecstatic spray. And towering high above 
 the sallow glare of beach-grass and cactus 
 thicket the bright green cocoanut palms clat 
 tered and fanned with at least the sound of 
 coolness I 
 
 "I I suppose I ll have to keep the lady 
 in my tent," whispered Daphne. 
 
 "Your supposition is perfectly correct," 
 said her father. 
 
 "She s got rather nice eyes, I think," whis 
 pered Daphne. "And the cutest hair!" 
 
 "Has she really?" said her father. 
 
 At the sudden sharp wince in the little hand 
 that had nestled so confidently in his own he 
 glanced back just in time to catch the look 
 he so dreaded in her eyes. 
 
 "I I suppose I ought to tell her," suffered 
 Daphne. 
 
 "Tell her what?" snapped her father. 
 
 "Why my my story," stammered 
 Daphne. "It wouldn t be quite honorable not 
 to, would it?" Desperately the young lips 
 tried to recapture some kind of a humorous 
 smile. "Tell her I mean quite frankly, you
 
 OLD-DAD 133 
 
 know that I m more or less of a notorious 
 character." In a single quiver the young 
 mouth stripped itself of even this futile at 
 tempt at mirth. "Nc decent woman would 
 ever choose to associate with me again, the 
 President said." 
 
 In an outburst of quite irrelevant temper, 
 Jaflrey Bretton swung around to wait for the 
 Intruding Lady. 
 
 "Is this a tortoise race?" he demanded ac 
 cusingly. "Are we to die here in our tracks 
 of hunger and thirst?" Without so much as 
 a "By your leave" he snatched the Intruding 
 Lady s hand in his spare one and plunged on 
 ward again. As they raced across the spongy, 
 tide-swept sand bar just ahead of a huge blue 
 wave and sighted the white tents at last, he 
 tossed back his head with a whoop of ex 
 travagant mirth. "Whatever in the world 
 have I done," he demanded of earth, air, sky, 
 sea, "that I should be marooned on a coral 
 island with tivo beautiful ladies one of 
 whom is my daughter and the other the bride 
 of another man?" 
 
 "S-s-h!" warned Daphne with a twitch of 
 the hand. "There s a stranger at the camp
 
 134 OLD-DAD 
 
 fire!" Dropping her father s fingers and 
 quite ignoring the other lady she ran swiftly 
 ahead, and dodging into a thick clump of 
 beach-grass crouched down like a young 
 Indian to study out the mystery. "Oh, Old- 
 Dad!" she signaled back with her finger on 
 her lips, "it s the- sissiest-looking man ! Such 
 queer little narrow shoulders! And the 
 mooniest eyes! And a beard like a silk hand 
 kerchief!" 
 
 "Must be the Outlaw," said her father 
 "The Outlaw?" protested Daphne. "Oh, 
 dear me!" she cried suddenly. "He s seen 
 me! And he s skulking off through the grass 
 with a great roll of furs or something under 
 his arm! Quick! Maybe we re robbed!" 
 Darting out into full view on the beach she 
 stood poised for a single uncertain instant 
 while the Outlaw, as though by magic, van 
 ished from sight. 
 
 "Robbed! Oh no," laughed her father. 
 "It s your bathing suit! Next to being the 
 honestest man I know this particular Outlaw 
 happens to be also the most squeamishly 
 modest. Creep around the back way by the
 
 OLD-DAD 135 
 
 palmettos," he ordered, "and put on a skirt! 
 I want to see him!" 
 
 Dropping the Brown Khaki Lady s fingers 
 he cupped his hands to his mouth and began 
 to halloo across the little distance. 
 
 "Hi there, Alliman!" he called. 
 
 "How-do, Mr. Bretton!" came the soft- 
 voiced answer. Very cautiously, then, from 
 the thicket the man himself emerged with the 
 roll of wildcat skins still clutched in his arms. 
 Daphne certainly had not exaggerated the 
 gentleness of him, nor the narrow shoulders, 
 nor the silky old-fashioned brown beard, nor 
 the bland eyes. 
 
 "Come to trade me those cat skins for some 
 pipe tobacco and oranges?" smiled Jaffrey 
 Bretton. 
 
 "I don t mind," drawled the Outlaw. 
 
 As one to whom Time meant nothing nor 
 ever would again, he sat down on the edge of 
 the old wreck and drew his empty pipe from 
 his pocket. 
 
 "Just behind that broken spar there you ll 
 find a tobacco tin, I guess," said Jaffrey Bret- 
 ton. "I rather plan to cache more or less of it 
 around on such shelf-room as the island af-
 
 136 OLD-DAD 
 
 fords. . . . It s such a blamed nuisance to get 
 way off up the beach somewhere and find 
 you ve forgotten your baccy. That s the only 
 conceivable fault I could find with this 
 island," he mused. "There s so little closet 
 room and practically no shelves!" 
 
 "Puff, puff, puff," without a flicker of ex 
 pression the Outlaw sucked at his pipe. 
 "Puff, puff puff puff, puff." 
 
 With a gesture toward the tents, a nod to 
 ward the retreating back of the Brown Khaki 
 Lady, Jaffrey Bretton essayed to re-crank the 
 conversation. 
 
 "My ladies," he confided, "have been 
 swimming wading running not to say 
 yachting!" 
 
 "Pretty ladies!" blushed the Outlaw. 
 
 "Thank you," bowed Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "Puff, puff, puff, puff, puff," sighed the 
 Outlaw s pipe. 
 
 Very deftly Jaffrey Bretton reached round 
 behind the broken spar for a smoke of his 
 own. 
 
 "Any special news this last year?" he asked. 
 
 Thoughtfully, from the long monotonous 
 months of heat and glare and squalor and
 
 OLD-DAD 137 
 
 privation and almost absolute isolation, the 
 Outlaw extracted as a sheer gift the one 
 comely fact. 
 
 "I seen a whole bunch of pink cur 
 lew," he said. 
 
 "The deuce you did!" brightened JafYrey 
 Bretton. 
 
 "Any news up your way?" droned the 
 Outlaw. 
 
 From Europe, Asia, Africa from the 
 courts of kings and the gossip of queens, from 
 a hundred adventures, from a hundred glit 
 tering memories Jaffrey Bretton traded gift 
 for gift. 
 
 "I saw the World s Series," he confided. "I 
 saw Frank Baker make his two home-runs." 
 
 "N o?" shivered the Outlaw. Very slowly 
 he removed the pipe from his mouth. For 
 an instant only, a muscle twitched like a sob 
 in his grizzled throat. As though suddenly 
 consumed with bashfulness, he began to 
 shuffle his bare toes in the sand. "Got got 
 the same President as usual?" he ventured at 
 last 
 
 "As far as I know," said Bretton. "I was 
 in Washington three weeks ago."
 
 138 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Orange crop good up-state?" persisted the 
 listless voice. 
 
 "Good enough, I guess," acquiesced Bret- 
 ton. 
 
 "Anything special in the papers these 
 days about Alabamy?" mumbled the pipe- 
 clenched lips. 
 
 "Alabama s still on the map," admitted 
 Bretton. 
 
 "Puff puff puff," mused the Outlaw. 
 Then very limply he struggled to his feet. 
 "Say, Martha wants you," he said. 
 
 "Martha?" puzzled Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "Wants me? . . . What for?" 
 
 "She don t say," said the Outlaw, "but she 
 wants you quick." 
 
 "Quick?" gibed Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "She sure wants you quick," repeated the 
 Outlaw. 
 
 "Oh, all right, we ll go now," acquiesced 
 Jaffrey Bretton, "just as soon as I can jump 
 into my khakis! Why, I wouldn t fail 
 Martha for anything in the world! Why, 
 
 that time the catfish stung me she " Quite 
 
 precipitate his face darkened, and then 
 cheered again. "Oh, of course I haven t my
 
 OLD-DAD 139 
 
 launch here," he acknowledged, "but we can 
 go in yours!" 
 
 "Oh no," protested the Outlaw gently. 
 "It ll be night coming back, and I don t cal 
 culate on going nowheres in the dark. . . . 
 It ain t healthy to travel in the dark. . . . 
 My mother back home, she always say it ain t 
 healthy no ways to travel in the dark." 
 
 "Oh, nonsense!" said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "Why, Martha may be ill!" 
 
 "She sure has ^ot something," sighed the 
 Outlaw, "but it ain t a dyingness. To-mor- 
 row ll do." 
 
 "It certainly won t do if Martha s in 
 trouble!" cried Jaffrey Bretton. "We ll go 
 this minute! . . . Wait till I tell the ladies, 
 and we ll all be along just as soon as we can 
 grab up a bite to eat!" 
 
 Like a man smitten in his tracks, the Out 
 law stopped short and began to twirl his bat 
 tered slouch hat in his hands. 
 
 "Oh not the ladies!" he protested wanly. 
 
 "Sure, we ll take the ladies!" insisted Bret- 
 ton. "It will be quite an adventure for 
 them." 
 
 Dumbly the Outlaw stared for a moment
 
 140 OLD-DAD 
 
 from the Gulf to the sky and back to Jaffrey 
 Bretton s smile again. 
 
 "You ain t forgotten Martha s little pecu 
 liarity, has you?" he whispered, "about 
 red?" In frankly abject misery he began to 
 retwirl his hat. "One of them ladies had 
 red hair, I notices," he said. 
 
 With a whoop of joy, Jaffrey Bretton tossed 
 back his own white head. 
 
 "I guess we could muffle it," he laughed. 
 
 But the Outlaw recognized no mirth in any 
 thing at the moment. 
 
 "It ain t so easy to muffle ladies," he said. 
 
 "Oh, shucks!" persisted Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "Trot along." 
 
 Reluctantly the Outlaw turned and started 
 for his boat. 
 
 "My engine ain t running any too good," 
 he confided plaintively. 
 
 "They never do," said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 " Tain t near likely there s enough gas," 
 deprecated the Outlaw. 
 
 "There never is," said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 With a gesture of sheer weariness the Out 
 law submitted to his fate. 
 
 "Oh, very well this time," he said, "but I m
 
 OLD-DAD 141 
 
 going to move. I likes you fine, Mr. Bretton, 
 but I sure am a-going further off. What with 
 Lost Man and Martha this here Gulf is get 
 ting too crowded." 
 
 Cocking his head abruptly toward the 
 sound of metal ringing on metal, Jaffrey Bret- 
 ton gestured toward the mangrove-shadowed 
 cove. 
 
 "There s good old Lost Man now," he said, 
 "tinkering with your engine." 
 
 "Oh Lost Man s all right," admitted the 
 Outlaw, "only he ain t got any tact." 
 
 "Oh, shucks!" repeated Jaffrey Bretten. 
 "Trot along, I say! . . . But go over to the 
 food tent first and pick out your trade for the 
 cat skins. Whatever s fair, you know? Any 
 thing you please. . . . Strawberries, aspara 
 gus, chili con carne anything, you know, 
 except caviar." 
 
 "Yes I know," rallied the Outlaw. With 
 the slightest possible accentuation of his pace 
 he started up the beach. 
 
 Still laughing to himself Jaffrey Bretton 
 bolted for his tent and his khakis. 
 
 "Hurry up hurry up hurry up!" he 
 called across to the tent that sheltered Daphne
 
 142 OLD-DAD 
 
 and the Intruding Lady. "We re going on an 
 adventure! Heaven knows what it is but 
 something is the matter with Martha. . . . 
 Be sure and bring your sweater we re liable 
 to be out all night" 
 
 In an incredibly short space of time he 
 reappeared on the "tote path" hurrying back 
 and forth between the camp and the launch 
 with a great jug of drinking water, a khaki- 
 colored blanket or two, and indeterminate tins 
 of coffee and milk and meat. 
 
 Very frankly bewildered, but conscien 
 tiously determined to be a good sport, the 
 Brown Khaki Lady hurried to help him. 
 
 Deflected by some sudden adolescent 
 dreaminess, Daphne was the last to emerge 
 from her tent. In her white shoes and stock 
 ings, her short white skirt, her simple little 
 white middy-blouse and severe white tarn, all 
 her wild, nymphlike beauty of the surf and 
 the beach seemed to have reverted into sheer 
 childish loveliness and austerity. Craving a 
 yellow cactus bloom to stick in her belt, she 
 plunged off first into the nearest thicket. 
 Chasing a bright blue butterfly, she decided 
 just as impulsively to explore the farther
 
 OLD-DAD 143 
 
 palmetto. Then altogether contritely she 
 started out to find her own way back to the 
 waiting launch and her companions. 
 
 Green and dank and lacelike as the vegeta 
 tion of an aquarium the great trees traced 
 their leaves and branches against the sky. 
 Close in a little bush a storm-blown scarlet 
 bird twittered and preened in its temporary 
 sacristry. High over all throbbed the ecstasy 
 of the surf. 
 
 "Oh beauti fulness!" gasped Daphne. "In 
 all the world," she thought, "is there any word 
 this moment except just beautifulness?" 
 
 Then quite suddenly from the green maze 
 just beyond her she heard a word that some 
 other person evidently seemed to consider the 
 biggest word of the moment, and that word 
 was "JafTrey!" Jaffrey? ... Of all things! 
 
 With a lurch of her heart she darted for 
 ward just in time to see her father and the 
 Brown Khaki Lady standing like the picture 
 of the Huguenot lovers, with their hands on 
 each other s shoulders. . . . And there was a 
 laugh on the Brown Khaki Lady s lips! But 
 there were tears in her eyes!
 
 144 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Jaffrey!" cried the Brown Khaki Lady, 
 "since when have you boasted a daughter?" 
 
 Stricken with astonishment and resentment 
 at the decepion which had been practised 
 upon her, Daphne dashed out into the open 
 only to find that at some shriller cry than hers 
 both her father and the lady were speeding 
 madly toward the beach, where, huddled 
 somewhat conglomerately in the bow of the 
 launch, the Outlaw was holding Lost Man at 
 bay with a distinctly businesslike-looking 
 gun. 
 
 "What in thunder s the matter?" shouted 
 Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 For a single relaxing instant the Outlaw 
 glanced back across his narrow shoulder. 
 
 "This-here Lost Man ain t got any tact," 
 he sighed. 
 
 "Put that gun down!" cried Bretton. 
 "Why, the poor old chap s twice your age!" 
 
 "And twice my size," confided the Out 
 law. But he lowered the gun at least an inch. 
 
 "But what s it all about?" insisted Bretton. 
 
 Very gloweringly Lost Man essayed to be 
 the real explainer.
 
 OLD-DAD 145 
 
 "He was silly about a crab," glowered Lost 
 Man. 
 
 " Tweren t, either, silly," argued the Out 
 law. "He stepped on a crab and hurted it. 
 There ain t no call to hurt nothing, I say." 
 
 "Nice one to talk, you are!" snarled Lost 
 Man. "You you man-killer, you!" 
 
 Quicker than a flash the Outlaw raised his 
 gun again. 
 
 "I ain t no man-killer," he droned. "I 
 ain t never in my life killed no man. What 
 I killed was two men both coming at me 
 double. There ain t no man living, I tells 
 you, more peaceful than me. . . . But when 
 I m moonshining" in an instant the flaccid 
 lips had tightened into a single merciless line 
 "but when I m moonshining I don t stand 
 no monkeyshining!" 
 
 "Oh, cut it out!" said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "Here come the ladies!" 
 
 "I forgot the ladies!" collapsed the Outlaw. 
 Blushing like a schoolboy he tucked his gun 
 back in his belt, and began to tinker with the 
 engine. 
 
 But the ladies, it seemed, were not over- 
 quick about coming.
 
 146 OLD-DAD 
 
 A little impatiently Jaffrey Bretton turned 
 back to meet them. The Brown Khaki Lady 
 was frankly scared. But Daphne, though 
 white as a sheet, admitted no trepidation. 
 
 "Oh, don t you think he s too dangerous 
 to go with?" shivered the Brown Khaki Lady. 
 
 "Nonsense!" laughed Jaffrey Bretton. 
 "He s as gentle as a lamb." 
 
 "If you handle him right," supplemented 
 the Brown Khaki Lady. 
 
 "Isn t most everything dangerous," laughed 
 Jaffrey Bretton, "if you don t handle it right? 
 A fifth-story window? A knife and fork? A 
 blank sheet of paper? The buttons on your 
 coat? Yet only a fool jumps through the 
 fifth-story window, or tries to cram the sheet 
 
 of paper into his eye, or " With a gasp 
 
 of apprehension he turned suddenly on 
 Daphne. "You are white!" he said. 
 
 Who was this woman what was she to her 
 father? 
 
 Twice Daphne opened her lips to cry out 
 the question the accusation, the bewilder 
 ment that was consuming her. Then, with a 
 really heroic effort, she swung in her tracks 
 and ran off at full speed toward the launch.
 
 OLD-DAD 147 
 
 "Hurry up, you you slow-pokes!" she 
 turned and called back when neither the 
 quiver of her lips nor the blur of her eyes 
 could be gleaned through the distance. 
 
 In another five minutes, with a great churn 
 of water, a great chug of engine, a great 
 stench of gasolene, the little old rickety launch 
 was on its way. 
 
 It was still very bright, very hot; but al 
 ready, as though for sheer weight and wilted- 
 ness, the huge sun lolled in its orbit, and like 
 a turbulent bed smoothed out at last for the 
 night the green mangrove-pillow and white 
 sand-sheet of the fast-receding shore gleamed 
 soft and cool at last above the taut blue 
 blanket of the Gulf. 
 
 Perched high in the bow of the launch 
 Daphne sat staring back at her traveling com 
 panions the puny Outlaw, the gigantic Lost 
 Man, her own most distinguished-looking 
 father, and the mysterious lady. Like a crip 
 pled phonograph record her mind seemed to 
 catch suddenly on that phrase "her most dis 
 tinguished-looking father and the mysterious 
 lady the mysterious lady." . . . And they 
 were all bound somewhere on a mysterious
 
 148 OLD-DAD 
 
 errand an all-night mysterious errand con 
 cerning some mad woman who didn t like red 
 
 and and Quite alarmingly her heart 
 
 began to pound and pound and pound! "And 
 a month ago," she thought, "I was getting up 
 when bells rang, and going to bed when bells 
 rang, and thinking when bells rang, and stop 
 ping thinking when bells rang!" In a curi 
 ous little shiver she looked up suddenly to 
 find Lost Man s eyes fixed on hers with a 
 distinctly benign and apostolic smile, but even 
 as he smiled he hunched his shoulders up, 
 clapped his hands together and burst once 
 more into the old English song: 
 
 "Diaphenia, like the daffadowndilly, 
 White as the sun, fair as the lily. . . ." 
 
 With a single outcry, Daphne tossed back 
 her head and shrieked her nerves into space. 
 
 "Good !" said her father. "Now you ll feel 
 better!"
 
 II 
 
 IT was dark when they sighted the yellow 
 lantern light on Martha s Island. 
 Darkness drops down so suddenly in 
 the far south! It s rather spooky! Rather a 
 nice spooky, though, if you happen to be a 
 reasonably innocent Northerner looking for 
 thrills. It s only poor souls like Lost Man 
 and the Outlaw, and perhaps even Martha 
 herself, to whom Darkness symbolizes a stab 
 in the back, a shot from ambush, or God 
 knows what! 
 
 To Daphne, this night, the darkness was 
 all a-tingle with magic and pain. High over 
 head in ineffable crispness the blue-black 
 dome of the sky seemed fairly crackling with 
 stars. Close around her in murky mystery 
 the great Gulf chuckled and prattled of coral 
 and pearl. From the dark, huddled group 
 in the stern of the boat not a face or a feature 
 flared familiarly to hers. And drowned in 
 the shuddering gasp and throb of the engine 
 
 149
 
 150 OLD-DAD 
 
 her father s deep-voiced raillery, even the 
 Brown Khaki Lady s light laughter, sounded 
 like something from another world. 
 
 It was Daphne s own little w r orld that con 
 cerned her most at that moment, a world in 
 chaos ! 
 
 "My father is false to me!" mutinied her 
 wild little heart. "He has deceived me! 
 And about a lady!" woke jealousy. "We 
 didn t need another lady! And what earthly 
 reason could two people have for pretending 
 to be strangers when they really were lovers? 
 But how could two people possibly be lovers," 
 she questioned suddenly with an entirely new 
 stab of bewilderment and pain, "if one of 
 them was already married to somebody else? 
 If one of them indeed was actually on a 
 honeymoon? Even though at the particular 
 moment she might have run away from her 
 honeymoon? Marriage was marriage, people 
 said! You had to play it fair! Everybody 
 had to play it fair! It was like a game! 
 Even people who cheated in business wouldn t 
 think of cheating in games! It wasn t good 
 
 sportsmanship! It wasn t " Feverishly 
 
 her fancy quickened and raged at all its
 
 OLD-DAD 151 
 
 pulses. "If my father isn t good," she tor 
 tured, "who is good? If my father isn t good, 
 what is good? If my father isn t good 
 what s the use of anybody being good?" 
 
 Defiantly she lifted her eyes to the stars. 
 And the stars laughed at her! Distractedly 
 she turned her ear to the Gulf and heard the 
 Gulf nudging the poor old launch in its ribs! 
 
 Then like the bumpy end of a dream, in 
 finitely alarming, irresistibly awakening, the 
 little launch snubbed its nose into wood in 
 stead of a wave, and the voyage was over! 
 
 Gracing the upper step of a . peculiarly 
 water-logged and dilapidated looking pier 
 the yellow lantern flared down its wan wel 
 come to the voyagers eyes. There was not a 
 soul in sight, nor any sign of human habitation 
 except the lantern and the ruined pier. 
 
 "Truly it must be very lonesome for a 
 lantern living all alone like this," observed 
 the Brown Khaki Lady s faintly mocking 
 voice. 
 
 Then suddenly out of the further shadows 
 where pier and land presumably met, creep 
 ing low on its belly, and whimpering with
 
 152 OLD-DAD 
 
 excitement, emerged a little dark body edging 
 frenziedly toward them. 
 
 "Why what the dickens?" cried Jaffrey 
 Bretton. "Why, how in thunder? Well, I 
 should think Martha had got something P 
 Why it s Creep-Mouse!" he shouted, and 
 jumped ashore. 
 
 Scramblingly the Brown Khaki Lady fol 
 lowed after him. 
 
 "Here! Wait for me!" she begged. 
 
 As he swung round to help her a single 
 phrase passed his lips. 
 
 "Pull down your hat-brim!" he ordered. 
 "In this light your hair looks almost crim 
 son!" 
 
 Then man, and woman, and dog faded into 
 the shadow. 
 
 With a grunt of indifference, Lost Man and 
 the Outlaw resumed their eternal job of 
 tinkering with the engine. Shadows working 
 on shadows ! 
 
 "Oh, a lot anybody seems to care what be 
 comes of me!" quivered Daphne. "Even 
 Old-Dad didn t say Good-bye. Even Creep- 
 Mouse didn t say Howdy! 4 What s it all 
 about?" she questioned tartly. "What s
 
 OLD-DAD 153 
 
 what s anything all about?" With a swift 
 experimental impulse she slid over to the 
 edge of the fore-deck and tested the shallow 
 tide with one slender foot and ankle. In an 
 other instant while the two men wrangled she 
 had slipped over into the water and was 
 speeding up the unknown beach. "I ll go find 
 something of my own!" raged her wild little 
 heart. "Something that will say Good-bye 
 to me! Something that will say Howdy! 
 Good bad living or dying something all 
 my own!" 
 
 Indifferent to the clogging sand, impervi 
 ous to the scratch and snag, stumbling over 
 wreckage, dodging through palmetto, uncon 
 scious of her breathlessness, unhampered by 
 her loneliness, fired only by a strange sort of 
 exhilaration, a weird new sense of emancipa 
 tion, she sped on through the excitant dark, 
 till tripping suddenly on some horrid slimy 
 thing like the dead body of a shark she pitched 
 over head-first into a tangle of beach-grass, 
 and crawling out on all fours into the clean, 
 sweet sand again, crawled into the spurting 
 flash of a revolver shot whose bullet just 
 barely grazed the wincing lobe of her ear.
 
 154 OLD-DAD 
 
 Tight as a vise a man s arms closed around 
 her! 
 
 "My God!"" gasped a man s voice, "I 
 thought you were a panther or a bear or 
 something!" 
 
 Struggling to free herself Daphne snatched 
 her small flash-light from her pocket and 
 flamed it full on the man s face. 
 
 "Why what the the dickens?" she bab 
 bled hysterically. "Why how in the world?" 
 she rallied desperately. "Well I should 
 think Martha had got something! Why 
 why, it s the the Kissing Man!" she cried. 
 
 With widening eyes and a dropped jaw the 
 man returned the stare. 
 
 "Y you?" he stammered. 
 
 Fumbling round through the sand for his 
 own larger lantern he flashed a steadier flare 
 of light upon the scene. 
 
 "What are you doing here and 
 crawling on your hands and knees?" he asked. 
 His face was ashy gray. 
 
 "Why, I m running away!" glowed 
 Daphne. Her eyes were like stars, the flush 
 in her cheeks flaunting and flaming like a 
 rose-colored flag.
 
 OLD-DAD 155 
 
 "Running away?" quickened the man. 
 "From what?" 
 
 "I don t know!" laughed Daphne. 
 
 "To what?" questioned the man. 
 
 "I don t care!" laughed Daphne. 
 
 With another perceptible start the young 
 man turned upon her. 
 
 "Don t you know it s not safe for you to be 
 alone like this?" he stormed. "Don t you 
 know how wild this country is? Don t you 
 know there are bears and panthers and wild 
 
 cats and snakes and . And I almost 
 
 shot you," he repeated dully. "Except for 
 this this infernal tremor in my right hand 
 that everybody is trying to cure me of I 
 should probably have killed you." 
 
 "Do you really mean," cried Daphne with 
 a fresh shock of excitement, "that except for 
 just one little chance I might be lying here 
 dead this very minute? Dead and all over, 
 I mean? Tennis and parties and new hats 
 and everything all over and done with? As 
 dead and all over as as Noah?" she gasped. 
 
 "Yes," acknowledged the man. 
 
 Solemnly for a moment in the poignant awe 
 of it all the jaded worldly-wise face and the
 
 156 OLD-DAD 
 
 eager ingenuous young face measured this 
 matter of life or death in the depths of each 
 other s eyes. 
 
 Then for sheer woman-nature the girl 
 edged a little bit nearer to the poor man who 
 had almost killed her. And for sheer man- 
 nature the man put his arm around the poor 
 girl whom he had almost killed. It was 
 sheer Nature s nature though that blew a 
 strand of the girl s bright, fragrant hair across 
 the man s lips. 
 
 With a sound like a snarl the man edged 
 off again. 
 
 "Whew, but my nerves are jumpy!" he 
 said. In the flare of the lantern light the 
 scar on his face showed suddenly with ex 
 traordinary plainness, and as though a bit 
 conscious of the livid streak he brushed his 
 hand casually across his mouth and cheek 
 bone. "Tell a fellow again," he said, "about 
 this running away business. What s the 
 game?" 
 
 "It isn t a game at all," flared Daphne. "I 
 tell you I m running away!"
 
 OLD-DAD 157 
 
 "But what about that stern parent of 
 yours?" grinned the man. 
 
 "My father is more interested in another 
 lady!" cried Daphne. "He s all but forgot 
 ten my existence. Oh, of course I don t mean 
 he s deserted me," she explained with hys 
 terical humor. "It s merely that for the time 
 being and for all time to come," she quick 
 ened suddenly, "I ve got to have a life of my 
 
 own !" 
 
 "It s an original idea," said the man. 
 
 At the faint tinge of mockery in the words 
 all the hot, unreasoning anger surged back 
 into Daphne s heart again. 
 
 "Oh, you needn t make fun of me!" she 
 cried. "And you needn t try to stop me! 
 I m a Bretton, you know! And all the Bret- 
 tons are wild! Oh, awfully wild! I read 
 it in the paper! And I I m going to be the 
 wildest of them all!" 
 
 "Just exactly how wild are you plan 
 ning to be?" asked the man. Simultaneously 
 with the question he lifted the lantern and 
 flashed it like a spot-light on the girl s elfish 
 beauty, the damp skirt moulding her slender 
 limbs, the bright disheveled hair slipping
 
 158 OLD-DAD 
 
 out from the prim little tarn, the sailor-col 
 lared blouse dragged down just a little bit too 
 far from the eager, unconscious young throat! 
 "Just exactly how wild are you planning 
 to be?" 
 
 "Oh, as wild as wild!" gloated Daphne. 
 "I m going to have an aeroplane! I m going 
 to have a a " 
 
 With an odd little laugh the man jumped 
 to his feet, and held out his hand to Daphne. 
 
 "Where I live," he chuckled, "aeroplanes 
 grow on trees. You re just the little girl I m 
 looking for! Come along!" 
 
 "Come along where?" laughed Daphne, 
 with her hand already in his. 
 
 "Oh, just along along! " urged the young 
 man with a laugh that almost exactly dupli 
 cated her own. "For Heaven s sake never 
 spoil a good start by worrying about a poor 
 finish!" 
 
 "You talk just a little bit like my father," 
 winced Daphne. 
 
 "Maybe I talk like him," laughed the 
 young man, "but I don t walk like him! No 
 more straight and narrow for me! You re 
 perfectly right, little girl, about this game of
 
 OLD-DAD 159 
 
 being good ! I ve tried it a whole month now 
 and believe me, there s nothing in it! 
 Why, even the gods don t intend you to be 
 good!" he laughed. "When they proffer you 
 sweets on a golden plate they certainly can t 
 expect you to refuse em!" 
 
 "I never ate from a golden plate!" laughed 
 Daphne, as snatching her little hand loose 
 she jumped across the edge of a wave. 
 
 "Oh, please don t run away from me!" en 
 treated the young man. "Whoever you run 
 away from oh, please don t run away from 
 me! It isn t exactly fair, you know! It 
 
 isn t " Flashing his lantern aloft he 
 
 stood for a single instant with his slender, 
 fastidiously flanneled figure silhouetted in 
 congruously against the wild, primitive back 
 ground of cactus and wreckage. Then in a 
 faint paroxysm of coughing, light and figure 
 faded out. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot," cried Daphne. "Why, of 
 course we mustn t run!" All the excitement 
 in her turned suddenly to tears. "After all," 
 she confided impetuously, "running away on 
 an island isn t so awfully satisfying! No mat 
 ter how far you ran it would always be just
 
 160 OLD-DAD 
 
 round and round! Compassionately she 
 turned back towards him. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know!" snapped the young 
 man. "Some islands, you know, aren t quite as 
 round and round as others! This one for 
 
 instance " With a spring he was at her 
 
 side, his queer, fascinating face thrust close 
 to hers, his vibrant hands thrilling her shoul 
 ders. "You little blessed baby!" he cried, 
 "if you re really looking for an adventure 
 let s make one! But while we re about it 
 for Heaven s sake let s make it a whopper! 
 Let s let s pretend that you are a beggar 
 maid!" he laughed excitedly, "and that I am 
 a fairy prince!" Once again he flashed his 
 lantern across her lovely disheveledness. 
 " Pon my soul," he exulted, "you look heaps 
 more like a beggar maid than I do like a 
 fairy prince! But if I could prove that I was 
 your fairy prince " 
 
 "Yes if you could prove that you were my 
 fairy prince " laughed Daphne. 
 
 "Pumpkin coach and all?" cried the man. 
 His hands on her shoulders were like electric 
 shocks. 
 
 "Pumpkin coach and all!" whispered
 
 OLD-DAD 161 
 
 Daphne. To save her soul she could not 
 have told just why she whispered. 
 
 With an odd little smile the young man 
 released his hold on her shoulders and 
 snatched her hand again. 
 
 "Then come quick!" he cried. 
 
 Maybe it wasn t "running," but it was very 
 much like it! Zig-zag across the beach, up 
 through the palmetto thicket, clattering 
 across an unexpected pile of old tin cans, out 
 into the soft sand again of a sheltered cove, 
 a coral harbor, where blazing with lights like 
 a Christmas tree a big house-boat lay at its 
 moorings. 
 
 "There!" cried the young man, "the pump 
 kin coach!" 
 
 "Why wherever in the world did it 
 come from?" gasped Daphne. Her heart 
 was beating so that she could scarcely speak. 
 "Wherever in the world?" 
 
 Swaying a little on her feet her shoulder 
 brushed ever so slightly against her com 
 panion s, and she turned to find herself 
 snatched into the steel-sinewed arms, the re 
 lentless dove-voiced urgency of the first pas 
 sion she had ever seen! This was no hoyden-
 
 162 OLD-DAD 
 
 ish tussle with an unnerved man who thought 
 you were a panther! This was no snub-nosed 
 smother against the breast of a boy who was 
 trying to keep you from screaming! This 
 was no idyl of the Class Room, no airy 
 persiflage of the poets! But Passion itself! 
 Raw Passion, too 1 A thing tender, terrifying, 
 beyond her wildest dreams of tenderness of 
 terror! The desperate, determinate, all but 
 irresistible pleading of a man who was fight 
 ing if not for life itself, at least for the last 
 joy that his life would ever know! 
 
 "Oh, little girl!" he pleaded, "I m mad 
 about you! Do you doubt it? Absolutely 
 mad!" His question marks were kisses, his 
 exclamation points, more kisses. "Ever since 
 that night, only six weeks ago, was it, when 
 I stumbled on you in the hotel? I was drunk 
 then, wasn t I ? Well, I m sober enough now ! 
 But drunk or sober there hasn t been a minute 
 since, day or night, when I haven t been trying 
 to follow you I Give me your lips!" 
 
 "I won t 1" said Daphne. 
 
 "I tell you I can t live without you," urged 
 the man. "I won t live without you! Your 
 father s quite right, I haven t got a whole lot
 
 OLD-DAD 163 
 
 of time, but think how we d pack it! Hawaii, 
 Japan, the moon if you d crave it! Eat, 
 drink and be merry and to-morrow you still 
 live! It s only I that have got to die! You 
 shall love me, I say! You shall! Merciful 
 God! Am I to live like a spoiled child all 
 my days and be robbed at this last of the only 
 real thing I ever wanted?" 
 
 "My my father " struggled Daphne. 
 
 It was a struggle of soul as well as body. 
 
 "Your father is a real man," conceded the 
 vibrant, compelling voice, "but he s only a 
 real man, and with a real man s needs. 
 There s bound to be another woman some 
 time. There s another woman even now you 
 say? What place then is left for you? But 
 come with me, I say, and as long as there s 
 breath left in my body you shall be first, last 
 
 and only I And after that " he shivered 
 
 ever so slightly, "Mrs. Sheridan Kaire won t 
 have to worry, I guess, overmuch about any 
 thing. Oh, I ve been a devil, I know! I 
 don t deny it! I " 
 
 "You you mean you ve kissed other 
 women?" cried Daphne, "Like this?" 
 
 "Yes several other women," winced
 
 164 OLD-DAD 
 
 the insatiate lips, "but not like this! Or this! 
 Or this? 
 
 "I won t give you my lips," said Daphne. 
 
 "You little spit-fire!" exulted the man. 
 "You you young panther! You blessed 
 little pal! You and I together and the 
 world well lost!" 
 
 With a catch of his breath that was almost 
 a sob he tilted her chin towards the light and 
 stared deep into her young unfathomable 
 eyes. His own eyes were hot with tears, and 
 the scar across his cheek twitched oddly at 
 the dimple. 
 
 "Wanted to be as wild as an aeroplane, 
 did you?" he questioned with extraordinary 
 gentleness. "And they crucified you for a 
 wanton in the Halls of Learning! Also in 
 the Sunday supplement next to the Comic 
 Section!" At the answering shiver of her 
 body something keener than tears glinted 
 suddenly in his eyes. But his voice never 
 lifted from its gentleness. "And they always 
 will crucify you, little girl," he said, "in this 
 fuddy-duddy boarding school world you ve 
 been living in! As long as you live, little 
 girl, some prude will be mincing forward
 
 OLD-DAD 165 
 
 from time to time to see if the nails are hold 
 ing the cross itself still in the full glare. But 
 the bunch I run with, little girl, would rate 
 you as a saint! Call it a wild bunch if you 
 want to, but wouldn t you rather be laughed 
 at for a saint than spat at for a devil?" 
 
 "Y-e-s," quivered Daphne. 
 
 "Then come!" said the man. 
 
 Daphne did not stir. 
 
 Once again the vibrant fingers stroked 
 along her pulsing wrist. "What you need," 
 crooned the persuasive voice, "for what ails 
 you, is to whoop things up a bit, not whoop 
 em down. Which statement," he grinned, 
 "though it may not spell righteousness, re 
 mains at least the truth. So come!" he quick 
 ened. "And if you want to go wild, we ll go 
 wild! And if you want to go tame, we ll go 
 tame! Heaven or hell, I don t care as long 
 as it s together!" 
 
 From the glittering house-boat in the little 
 bay a bell tolled out its resonant news that 
 the hour was eight o clock. 
 
 "Hurry up!" urged the man with the faint 
 est possible rasp of anxiety in his voice. "For 
 Heaven s sake if we re going let s go while
 
 166 OLD-DAD 
 
 the going is good ! No bungling! No fiasco! 
 All I want from you, he turned and confided 
 with sudden intensity, "is your promise that 
 if we do start you ll see the thing through! 
 My honor not to make a fool of you pledged 
 against your honor not to make a fool of me! 
 Girls are so unreliable." 
 
 " Girls? " winced Daphne. 
 
 From the glittering house-boat a woman s 
 laugh rang out with curious congruity. 
 
 But when Daphne winced this time, she 
 was in a lover s arms again, encompassed by 
 a lover s tenderness, coaxed by a lover s voice. 
 
 "Oh, I don t pretend for a moment," 
 crooned the persuasive voice, "that I ve got 
 just the crowd on board that I would have 
 chosen for this particular sort of get-away. 
 
 Nevertheless " With a chuckle that 
 
 would have been brutal if it had not been so 
 exultant he bent down and brushed his lips 
 across Daphne s throbbing temple. "Never 
 theless," he chuckled, "of all the crowds that 
 ever crowded anybody, this one represents 
 perhaps the one most ready to eat from my 
 hand. I haven t got much sense, it seems, nor 
 yet a long life, but what I have got," he
 
 OLD-DAD 167 
 
 laughed out suddenly, "I ve got for fair! 
 And that s money!" In a silence that was al 
 most sinister he stood for an instant staring 
 off at the house-boat s gay-lanterned outline 
 against the dark fluttery palms. "Thought 
 they d yank me back from all this did 
 they?" he questioned hotly. "Back to an old 
 Board Meeting in a New York snow-storm? 
 Not much! If you want your damned old 
 library, I wired em, come ahead down here 
 and thrash it out where a fellow can argue 
 without frost biting his tongue, and be catch 
 ing a tarpon or two on the side at the same 
 time. Wired em tickets and everything, the 
 whole damned outfit, architect and all! 
 Heap-sight easier though than going back to 
 New York! But if I don t want to give em 
 the library," he grinned with sudden malice, 
 "I don t have to, you know even now! 
 There s nothing in my father s will, I mean, 
 that compels me to give it. My father s will 
 merely suggests that I give it, advises me to 
 give it, with such subsequent moneys, he 
 quoted mockingly, as may comprise my 
 estate at the time I cash in. But of all the 
 big stiffs," he shuddered, "that I ever saw,
 
 168 OLD-DAD 
 
 Claudia Merriwayne leads them all, not even 
 excepting her new Dean or her Oldest 
 Trustee!" 
 
 "Claudia Merriwayne?" gasped Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, of course, in my day," persisted Kaire, 
 "I have had grace at my table, and some dis 
 grace now and then! But Greek? And 
 Latin? and Doric columns? And the in 
 fluence of concrete on young character? 
 Why where are you?" he turned and called 
 suddenly through the darkness. Gropingly 
 his arms reached out and snatched her to him 
 again, and for the first time she yielded 
 limply, and lay like a bruised rose against his 
 breast. "Why, I can t even hear you breath 
 ing!" he cried. "Why, you might be dead, 
 you are so still! And your little hands are 
 like ice! And " 
 
 "Did you say that that Miss Claudia 
 Merriwayne was on that boat out there 
 with you?" faltered Daphne. 
 
 "Why, yes," shrugged the man, "I think 
 that s the lady s name. Why why, shouldn t 
 she be there? All the colleges are closed now, 
 aren t they, for the Christmas holidays? Why, 
 surely you don t mean that you care?" he
 
 OLD-DAD 169 
 
 laughed. "That you don t like my having the 
 dame?" 
 
 "Care?" hooted Daphne. Like a wraith 
 suddenly electrified all the fire, the nerve, the 
 sparkle, the recklessness came surging back to 
 her! 
 
 Through every quiver of his overwrought 
 nerves he sensed the strange almost psychic 
 change come over her, a brighter gold to the 
 hair, a deeper blue to the eyes, a quicker pulse 
 in the slender throat. Every tender line of 
 her thrown suddenly into italics, every minor 
 chord crashing into crescendo! If she had 
 been beautiful in the rompish escapade of the 
 beach, and the single wistful silence of the 
 moment before, her beauty was absolutely 
 maddening to him now. 
 
 With a little quick cry that was almost like 
 a challenge she reached up and touched him 
 on the shoulder. It was her first caress. 
 
 "Oh, all right! I ll go with you !" she cried 
 excitedly. "But on one condition only!" 
 
 "A hundred conditions!" quickened the 
 man, "so long as you make them before we 
 start!" 
 
 "It s about our start that I m making this
 
 170 OLD-DAD 
 
 one!" cried Daphne. Her flesh was flaming 
 with blushes but neither her heart nor her 
 mind knew just why she blushed. "It s it s 
 about your drunkenness!" she flamed. "After 
 we re man and wife, with my faults as well 
 as yours, we ll have to do the best we can, 
 think it out, fight it out, maybe we can get 
 somebody to help us! But until we re man 
 and wife, I must not be embarrassed or 
 humiliated I Badness that knows that it s bad 
 ness, that s one thing! But silliness that 
 doesn t know it s silliness, I just couldn t stand 
 it, that s all!" Shrewdly her young eyes nar 
 rowed to his. "You re you re quite right 
 what you said on the beach just now! No one 
 can guarantee his ending! But it s an awful 
 goose, Sheridan Kaire, who doesn t guarantee 
 his start! So if I pledge you, Sheridan 
 Kaire," flamed the proud little face, "that 
 once started I will see the whole thing 
 through, it is pledged on the understanding 
 that you will protect the the dignity of that 
 start?" 
 
 Across the man s impatient face a dark un 
 happy flush showed suddenly.
 
 OLD-DAD 171 
 
 "I get you!" he said. "I will be very care 
 ful about my drinking." 
 
 "But as to a pledge from you," cried 
 Daphne, "that you wouldn t back out and 
 make a fool of me why, it just never would 
 have occurred to me to ask it! It doesn t 
 occur to me even now! Why why should 
 you make a fool of me?" she questioned. 
 "Why, how could you make a fool of me? 
 You love me, don t you?" she triumphed. 
 
 "I love you," said the man. 
 
 "Oh, all right, then!" cried Daphne. 
 " Nuffsaid! Let s go!" 
 
 Snatching a silver whistle from his white 
 flannel pocket the man blew sharply once 
 twice three times. Simultaneously with the 
 signal a slight commotion was visible on the 
 house-boat. 
 
 "They ll be over for us right away," said 
 the man. "Just as soon as they can get the 
 little boat launched." 
 
 With her small hand slipped into his, 
 Daphne stood pawing the sand like a pony 
 while she watched the operations. 
 
 "Will it be my house-boat?" she thrilled.
 
 172 OLD-DAD 
 
 "It will be your house-boat," smiled the 
 man. 
 
 "And my gay lanterns?" danced Daphne. 
 
 "And your gay lanterns," smiled the man. 
 
 "And my money?" cried Daphne. "And 
 my library?" 
 
 "And your everything," smiled the man. 
 
 With an absolutely elfish cry Daphne threw 
 back her head and began to laugh. 
 
 "Oh, I m not a bit afraid to go with you!" 
 she laughed. "Maybe I ought to be! But 
 I m not! I m not! Maybe it s because I m 
 too excited to be afraid! Maybe it s be 
 cause," she flamed, "I am never going to be 
 afraid of anything ever any more! Oh, I m 
 an awful kid," she paled and flamed again, 
 "I don t even know just what marriage is! 
 
 But " Wild as the humor of nymph or 
 
 faun the queer little cry burst from her lips 
 again. "But I know I must never deceive 
 you!" she cried. "I know that much at least! 
 So so maybe you won t want to take me," she 
 cried, "when I tell you that Miss Claudia 
 Merriwayne was the President who expelled 
 me from college!" 
 
 "What?" snapped Sheridan Kaire. "The
 
 OLD-DAD 173 
 
 devil you say! What? Oh, so that s why 
 you were willing to come? Just to get even? 
 
 Just to Now I must have been some 
 
 thick," he frowned, "not to have sized up that 
 that was the bunch who expelled you from 
 college. Thicker even than I thought I was ! 
 Seeing only your picture in the paper, sizing 
 up only your name!" Then quite suddenly he 
 put back his head and began to laugh. "Of all 
 the comic operas!" he hooted. "Of all the 
 Heaven-sent situations! We ll give them 
 their old library or not just as you say," he 
 
 hooted. We ll " Then with a gesture that 
 
 seemed to be all ardor and no gentleness he 
 reached out and drew her back to him. "I 
 don t care why you come," he cried, "as long 
 as you come!" 
 
 "Oh, won t it be glorious," danced Daphne, 
 "to surprise them so! I m going to pull my 
 hair way down over my face like this and 
 this," she illustrated with eager ringers, "so 
 that they won t know me at all until I m 
 ready I ll look so wild!" 
 
 "Everything s going to be glorious!" said 
 the man. "H-st! Here comes the launch!" 
 
 Like an excited child Daphne ran to meet
 
 174 OLD-DAD 
 
 it. Close at her shoulder followed the man. 
 Glancing back at him swiftly through the 
 bright maze of her hair, a single challenge, 
 half mischievous, half defiant, flashed from 
 her lips and eyes. 
 
 "Glorious 1 Glorious! Glorious!" she 
 laughed. "But I will never give you my 
 lips!" 
 
 All defiance and no mischief, the man s 
 laugh answered the challenge. 
 
 "I sha n t care what you give me," he 
 said, "when I m once fixed so that I can take 
 what I want!" 
 
 With a swish of keel and sand the little 
 launch landed at their feet. 
 
 The nattily uniformed sailor who manned 
 the launch was too well trained in his master s 
 service to show a flicker of surprise or curi 
 osity concerning his master s errands. But 
 a master s weakness being only too often the 
 man s, the only blunder of his ten years 
 service slipped now from his faintly alcoholic 
 lips. 
 
 "Good evening, Dighton!" nodded his mas 
 ter.
 
 OLD-DAD 175 
 
 "Good evening, sir!" saluted the man with 
 punctilious formality. 
 
 "Here, fix those cushions a little better I" 
 pointed his master as he helped the vague 
 white figure into the boat. "Here, Dighton, 
 give the lady a hand!" 
 
 Lifting his eyes for the first time to the 
 little lady s laughing face peering out half- 
 affrighted from her bright disheveled hair, 
 Dighton the man gave a purely involuntary 
 gasp, and stumbled a bit clumsily over some 
 shadowy obstacle. 
 
 "That s all right, Dighton," laughed his 
 master. "She s got the looks to knock most 
 any man over! Your new Mistress, Digh 
 ton!" he called out proudly. 
 
 "Your your new Mistress?" bungled the 
 man s addled lips. 
 
 Scarcely sensing the unhappy twist, but 
 lashed like a whip by the single expletive and 
 ghastly silence that followed it, Daphne 
 curled up in her cushions and prattled her 
 excitement into space. 
 
 "Oh, what a night!" she cried. "Oh, what 
 tall cocoanut palms! Oh, what bright stars! 
 Oh oh oh, whatever in the world shall I
 
 176 OLD-DAD 
 
 do about clothes?" she questioned precipi 
 tously. Gayer and gayer her little laugh 
 flashed from her lips. "Why, just for com 
 mon humanity," she gloated, "Miss Merri- 
 wayne will have to lend me a nightie! And 
 shoes and stockings! And a dress! Oh, won t 
 I look funny in Miss Merriwayne s great big 
 clothes?" Dismayed at the unbroken silence 
 she turned and stared up wondering-eyed at 
 the furious, frowning man beside her. "Why 
 what s the matter Sheridan Kaire?" she 
 whispered. "You look so sort of as 
 though your face hurt? Does it?" With her 
 eyes drawn as though by some irresistible 
 fascination to the pale zig-zagged outline of 
 his scar, she asked the one childish question 
 that was left on her lips. "Whoever hurt you 
 so?" she questioned. "Was it in a a brave 
 war or something? How ever in the world 
 could " 
 
 "Hush!" snarled the man. "For God s 
 sake, hush!" Then in passionate contrition 
 he bent down through the darkness and 
 touched his lips to her finger tips. "Forgive 
 me," he pleaded, "my nerves are jumpy!" 
 
 Brightly the house-boat loomed up before
 
 OLD-DAD 177 
 
 \ 
 
 them. In another moment they would be 
 alongside. 
 
 Once more the man bent down to the little 
 figure beside him. 
 
 "Just once," he demanded, "from your own 
 lips, I want to hear it! It wasn t I who n> 
 cited you to run away was it? It was your 
 own idea, I mean? You d already made up 
 your mind for some sort of a running before 
 you stumbled on me? I m simply the direc 
 tion you decided to run in?" For a single 
 instant across his worldly young face the ques 
 tion of his own responsibility flecked his lean 
 features into an almost exaggerated asceti 
 cism. "I m not specially anxious, you know, 
 to pose as a seducer of the young." 
 
 "As a what?" questioned Daphne. 
 
 Then softly thudding into the big house 
 boat s side the little launch finished its 
 journey, and only the chance of laughter was 
 left to either the man or the girl. 
 
 "Bang!" flew a little ladder to the launch. 
 "Creak!" strained a rope. With a patter of 
 soft-soled feet a half dozen white-sailored 
 forms came running! A dark blue officer 
 peered down from the deck! An extra
 
 178 OLD-DAD 
 
 tern flashed! And another! And another! 
 From some far shadowed corner a piano and 
 violin swept blithely into melody! 
 
 Then through hands and lips infinitely 
 more discreet than Dighton s, but eyes not 
 nearly so blank, the sparkling, spirited, ut 
 terly disheveled, utterly unexplainable little 
 figure followed the master of the house-boat 
 to the luxuriant, softly lighted cabin, where 
 gathered round an almost priceless mahogany 
 table two frowning, serious-minded women, 
 and three frowning serious-minded men sat 
 pouring over a great flare of blue prints. 
 
 "Nothing," affirmed President Merri- 
 wayne s clear, incisive voice at the moment, 
 "nothing I believe, so affects the human 
 mind as a noble appearance." 
 
 With a laugh about as mirthless as a 
 maniac s, but a humor fairly convulsed with 
 joy, Sheridan Kaire took a single glance at 
 Daphne, and drew her into the room. 
 
 "Behold, Ladies and Gentlemen," he an 
 nounced, "my Pirate Queen! The future 
 arbiter of my fortunes!" 
 
 From the priceless mahogany table five 
 chairs jerked back as though by a single thud.
 
 OLD-DAD 179 
 
 Five pairs of eyes flared suddenly on 
 Daphne, lapped up the beauty of her, the 
 disheveledness, the audacity, and blinked 
 their lids with astonishment. 
 
 "Is is it dramatics?" quavered the older 
 lady s fine patrician voice. "What a what 
 a child!" 
 
 "Dramatics?" bridled Miss Merriwayne. 
 As though the unrecognized figure before her 
 was deaf, dumb, blind, she lifted her lorgnette 
 in frowning scrutiny. "Some of the poor 
 whites down here are extraordinarily good 
 looking," she conceded, "but don t you really 
 think, Mr. Kaire, that your jest is just a little 
 little " 
 
 "Jest?" said Sheridan Kaire. 
 
 From the deck just above their heads the 
 thud of a dragging anchor rope sounded sud 
 denly, and the sharp cry of orders passed from 
 one sailor to another. 
 
 "In ten minutes at least," laughed Kaire, 
 "or in five, Heaven knows if we can make 
 it, we shall all be off!" With a quite unnec 
 essary air of diablerie he turned and chucked 
 Daphne under the chin. 
 
 From the further side of the lamp, beyond
 
 180 OLD-DAD 
 
 the unmistakable architect, beyond the un 
 mistakable trustee, a figure not yet distinct, 
 rose slowly into view. It was John Burnarde. 
 Very courteously he advanced towards his 
 host. Not a muscle of his face twitched, not 
 an accent of his voice either lifted or fell. 
 
 "Truly, Mr. Kaire," he suggested smilingly 
 as one might have smiled at a maniac, "don t 
 you think perhaps it might be better to finish 
 the discussion outside? No matter what a 
 bachelor may contend his rights to be as re 
 gards his personal affairs with women, you 
 will hardly insist, I think, on pursuing said 
 affair while my mother and President Mer- 
 riwayne remain your guests? Surely, to 
 morrow, when you are more yourself 
 again " 
 
 "I am not drunk!" flared Sheridan Kaire, 
 "and what s more you haven t seen me drunk 
 this whole week more than once ! Or, at most, 
 twice!" 
 
 "Drunk or sober," said John Burnarde 
 quite unflinchingly, "I request that you do 
 not involve us in any of your escapades!" 
 
 "Escapades?" scoffed Kaire. "You- 
 
 From the shadow to which she had partly
 
 OLD-DAD 181 
 
 retreated, Daphne sprang out, and brushed the 
 bright hair from her eyes. 
 
 "Why John!" she cried, "don t you know 
 me? It s Daphne! Daphne Bretton!" 
 
 "What?" staggered the new dean. "You? 
 Why, Daphne! Why- 
 
 "What difference is it to you who it is?" 
 interposed Kaire a bit roughly. 
 
 But before anybody could answer the Presi 
 dent herself had jumped to her feet. 
 
 "You, Daphne Bretton?" she gasped ac 
 cusingly. "You? What are you doing 
 here? Isn t it enough that you have disgraced 
 your college without adding this fresh es 
 capade to your career? What what wild, 
 unprincipled doings are you up to now? Is 
 
 there no shame in you? No " With an 
 
 imperious gesture she turned to her host. 
 "Surely, Mr. Kaire," she implored him, 
 "you are not in earnest about this girl? Are 
 we really to understand for one moment that 
 you contemplate allying yourself with this 
 girl? Putting the stewardship of your great 
 fortune in her hands? A girl with such a 
 history? A girl with such a character?" 
 
 "Miss Bretton s character is not under dis*
 
 182 OLD-DAD 
 
 cussion here," said John Burnarde decisively. 
 
 "Once again," snapped Sheridan Kaire, "I 
 ask what affair Daphne Bretton s character 
 is to you?" 
 
 "It s this to me," began John Burnarde 
 with his tortured eyes fairly raking the be 
 loved young face before him. (What was she 
 doing here?* ached every pulse in his body. 
 So lovely, so irresponsible, so strangely all 
 alone with this notorious young roue.) "It s 
 this to me," he repeated dully, glanced back 
 for a single worried second at his frail 
 mother s dreadful pallor, and crossed his arms 
 on his breast. "What is it to me, Daphne?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "It s this to him," said Daphne fearlessly. 
 "He liked me a little, but when the trouble 
 came, it had to stop. It wasn t his fault! 
 My father said it wasn t his fault! There 
 were merely other things other people, that 
 had to be considered. It s all right. It s 
 quite all right!" Defiantly the little chin 
 lifted. "Quite all right! I m going away 
 with Sheridan Kaire!" 
 
 With a piteously vain effort John Burn- 
 arde s mother struggled to reach her crutch
 
 OLD-DAD 183 
 
 and lapsed helplessly back into her chair 
 again. Only her white up-turned face be 
 trayed her shock. 
 
 But for once in his life John Burnarde did 
 not notice his mother. 
 
 "Oh, no no!" he cried. "You don t know 
 what you re doing! A lovely lovely young 
 girl like you to give yourself to a man 
 like Kaire with a reputation so notorious 
 that " 
 
 "I m not too notorious I notice for you 
 people to beg libraries from," drawled 
 Sheridan Kaire. Then quite suddenly he 
 leaned back against the wainscoating of the 
 cabin and began to laugh sardonically. "Jab 
 ber all you want to," he said. "It s a good 
 way to pass the time! Just a minute more 
 now and we ll be off, beating it for Key West 
 or Galveston or any other place where the 
 parsons are thickest and quickest! Miss 
 Daphne Bretton and Mr. Sheridan Kaire 
 heavily chaperoned by President Claudia 
 Merriwayne! All the newspapers will lean 
 heavily on that chaperone item! So square 
 it any way you want to with your college, Miss 
 Merriwayne!" he bowed. "Now that you
 
 184 OLD-DAD 
 
 have squared it with Daphne!" More hilari 
 ously yet he yielded to his mirth, and called 
 loudly for the Steward. "Champagne for 
 everybody, to-night!" he ordered. "Guests, 
 crew, cabin boys, everybody! If the cat won t 
 drink it, drown him in it! Drat libraries!" 
 he shouted lustily. "This is my Bachelor 
 Dinner!" 
 
 Swishing like a serpent s hiss, Miss Merri- 
 wayne started for her cabin. As she passed 
 Daphne she drew her skirts aside with a ges 
 ture that would have been sufficiently insult 
 ing without any further action. But her 
 tongue refused to be robbed of its own par 
 ticular reprisal. 
 
 "As I have remarked once before," she 
 murmured icily, "you you little wanton !" 
 
 "Not so fast!" cried a new voice from the 
 doorway. Towering, white head and brown 
 shoulders over everybody, Jaffrey Bretton 
 loomed on the scene. 
 
 "Oh Hades!" sighed the master of the 
 house-boat. 
 
 "Not so fast, anybody/" begged Jaffrey 
 Bretton. If the smile on his face was just 
 a little bit set it was at least still a smile.
 
 OLD-DAD 185 
 
 Quite casually above the spurt and flare of 
 his inevitable match and his inevitable cigar 
 ette his shrewd glance swept the gamut of 
 startled faces. "What s all the rumpus 
 about?" he quizzed. Simple as the question 
 was it seemed for some reason or other to put 
 a queer sort of pucker into everybody s pulses. 
 
 ("Oh, what a place!" shivered the oldest 
 trustee. "Why did we ever come?") ("Oh, 
 what a man!" quivered the architect. "I 
 wish I had designed him!") 
 
 Ignoring all other pulses, Jaffrey Bretton 
 turned to Miss Merriwayne. With sincere 
 and unaffected interest he appraised the 
 majestic if somewhat arrogant bloom of what 
 had been only a mere bud of good looks and 
 ambition twenty years before. 
 
 "You are certainly very handsome, Clytie," 
 he affirmed. 
 
 " Clytie? " gasped the oldest trustee. 
 
 "C-Clytie?" stammered Daphne. 
 
 "Miss Merriwayne and I were boy and girl 
 friends together," observed Bretton with un 
 ruffled blandness. "But for the moment it is 
 not personal reminiscence that concerns me 
 most." Towering, dominant, absolutely re-
 
 186 T OLD-DAD 
 
 lentless, but still serene, he blocked Miss Mer- 
 riwayne s exit. "J ust what, Clytie," he 
 asked, "were you calling my little girl?" 
 
 "You heard what I called her, Mr. Bret- 
 ton!" said Miss Merriwayne. "I called her 
 a wanton!" 
 
 Above the flare of a fresh match and a 
 fresh cigarette Jaffrey Bretton restudied her 
 face. 
 
 "And do you find it convenient now to 
 retract it?" he asked. 
 
 "I am not in the habit of retracting my 
 statements," said Miss Merriwayne. 
 
 "S o?" mused Jaffrey Bretton. As though 
 by pure accident, his eyes strayed to the blue 
 prints on the table. "What have we here?" 
 he smiled, "building plans?" 
 
 Sardonically from his own particular 
 silence Sheridan Kaire s laugh rang out. 
 
 "Those are the plans for the new library," 
 he confided, "that your daughter and I are 
 considering giving to her to her Alma 
 Mater!" 
 
 Humor for humor Jaffrey Bretton s laugh 
 answered his. "Good stuff!" he said, "the one 
 bright thought!"
 
 OLD-DAD 187 
 
 "And you?" he addressed one stranger, 
 "are the the possible architect?" 
 
 "I am," conceded the architect. 
 
 Very definitely Jaffrey Bretton drew back 
 a little from the door and pointed to the pas 
 sageway. "Trot along!" he smiled. "And 
 you?" he asked the old gentleman. 
 
 "I am Miss Merriwayne s oldest trustee," 
 asserted that dignitary with some unctuous- 
 ness. 
 
 "Trot along!" smiled Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 With punctilious courtesy he waved the 
 Dean s lovely old mother after them. "For 
 the moment," he begged her, "you will pardon 
 my peremptoriness? The thing that remains 
 to be said is said best to the least numbers." 
 
 "But I I like your little girl!" protested 
 the frail but determinate aristocrat. 
 
 "So do I!" smiled Bretton, but nodded her 
 out. 
 
 "Who are you?" demanded Bretton of the 
 only man but Kaire who remained. 
 
 "I am John Burnarde!" said the man, quite 
 invincibly. 
 
 "I thought so!" said Bretton. 
 
 "And as Miss Merriwayne s rather special
 
 188 OLD-DAD 
 
 representative at this time," added John Burn- 
 arde, "I refuse to leave the room while she 
 remains!" 
 
 "Oh, I like you!" said Bretton. "I ve al 
 ways rather liked you! But whether I did 
 or not!" he crisped, "you ve got to stay! You 
 and Miss Merriwayne, and Daphne, and my 
 self I" With a toss of his white hair he flung 
 a message to the master of the house-boat. 
 "Sorry to bully your guests so, Kaire!" he 
 said. "But not knowing the plan of your boat, 
 and being too formal to rummage around very 
 much," he added dryly, "this cabin seemed 
 somehow the surest place for a rather private 
 conversation. . . . Shall you still remain with 
 us as our host?" 
 , "I certainly shall!" snapped Kaire. 
 
 "You are perfectly welcome," smiled Jaf- 
 frey Bretton. "And you notice, perhaps 
 that the engine has not started?" 
 
 "I notice only too damned well," said 
 Kaire, "that the engine has not started!" 
 
 Out of the shadowy curve of Sheridan 
 Kaire s jealous arm Daphne sprang suddenly 
 forward. 
 1 "Oh, Old-Dad!" she besought him, "please
 
 OLD-DAD 189 
 
 please don t make such a fuss! What s 
 the good of it? What s the use? If I m bad, 
 I m bad! And unless I m going crazy, too 
 what is there left but fun?" 
 
 "But you see you re all wrong," smiled her 
 father. "You re not bad at all! Without 
 any question whatsoever you re the goodest 
 person here!" 
 
 "Oh Old-Dad!" scoffed Daphne. 
 
 "But I mean it," said her father. "The 
 little fracas at college was only a mistake. 
 Richard Wiltoner s mistake, indeed, rather 
 than yours except in so far as you dared him 
 into the making of it. Oh, shucks!" shrugged 
 her father. "Everybody makes mistakes!" 
 
 "Not mistakes like mine!" flared Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, yes, they do," smiled her father. "So, 
 please, I beg of you don t go bad just on that 
 account! Truly, you d be surprised if you 
 knew how many staid grown people of your 
 acquaintance have made very similar mis 
 takes. Now take Miss Merriwayne and my 
 self, for instance. Twenty " 
 
 With a gasp of horror Miss Merriwayne 
 reached out and touched him on the arm. 
 Her face was stark, but even now she did not
 
 190 OLD-DAD 
 
 lose altogether the poise so long and labori 
 ously acquired. "Some other time some 
 other day," she essayed desperately, "I will 
 be very glad to to discuss old days with you. 
 But now this moment your remarks 
 your suggestions are are ribald. Have you 
 no no honor?" she implored him. 
 
 "None any longer that conflicts with my 
 daughter s honor," said Jaffrey Bretton. To 
 the several pairs of startled eyes raised to his, 
 Jaffrey Bretton gave no glance. Every con 
 scious thought in his body was fixed at the 
 moment on Daphne. "Come here, Honey," 
 he said. 
 
 With embarrassment but no fear Daphne 
 came to him. 
 
 "Let me pass!" ordered Miss Merriwayne. 
 
 "It is not convenient," said Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 Across Daphne s tousled head, past Claudia 
 Merriwayne s statuesque shoulder, he stared 
 off retrospectively into space. "What I have 
 to say," he confided, "will take only an in 
 stant. . . . Twenty years ago," he mused, 
 "Miss Merriwayne and I were trapped in 
 a situation quite astonishingly similar to 
 Daphne s college tragedy. . . . Except that
 
 OLD-DAD 191 
 
 in our case there were four thoughtless young 
 sters involved instead of two and infinitely 
 more kissing. . . . Let me see," he turned 
 suddenly to Daphne. "In your case I believe 
 there was no kissing?" 
 
 "I should think not!" raged Daphne. 
 
 "U-m-m-m," mused her father. "Well 
 there was certainly some kissing in ours." 
 
 "This is outrageous!" cried Miss Merri- 
 vvayne. "Let me pass!" 
 
 With a smile that would have been insolent 
 if it had not been so brooding, Jaffrey Bretton 
 spread his arms across the doorway. 
 
 "You are a bigger girl, Clytie, than you 
 used to be," he said. "You can t slip out of 
 this situation quite as easily as you slipped 
 from the other." 
 
 With a shrug of his shoulders he turned 
 and stared into space again. When he glanced 
 back at his companions it was with just a little 
 bit of a start. 
 
 "Oh, yes I forgot," he said. "There was 
 a door that time, that wasn t blocked. And 
 the other boy jumped through the window. 
 . . . What possible haven was there left," he 
 asked, "for the panic-stricken little room-
 
 192 OLD-DAD 
 
 mate except in my arms? She smelt of 
 violets, I remember," he mused, "and her 
 throat was very white. Nobody ever knew 
 about the presence of the other boy. And only 
 the four of us knew about Cly Miss Mer- 
 riwayne I would say. But if Miss Merri- 
 wayne had come back," he quickened ever so 
 slightly, "and acknowledged frankly that she, 
 also, had been present, the school authorities, 
 I suppose, would hardly have judged the un 
 intentional tete-a-tete as harshly as they did. 
 . . . Even at the eleventh hour, if she had 
 been willing to come back and acknowledge 
 it or at the twelfth for the matter of that 
 or even at one o clock or two, while the out 
 raged Powers harangued on the case. . . . 
 But by three o clock, that timorous little 
 room-mate, seeing no other exit, slashed a 
 door through her little white throat and 
 fled away. 
 
 "So you see, Daphne," he smiled, "that even 
 
 across a mistake like that " 
 
 "You mean," blanched Daphne, "that " 
 
 Like a man straining very slightly toward 
 more air the new Dean s throat muscles lifted.
 
 OLD-DAD 193 
 
 On Kaire s face alone the grin remained 
 half a grin, anyway. 
 
 "Sailed away from a sinking wreck 
 With a something something on her deck," 
 
 he quoted diabolically. 
 
 "Hushf warned Jaffrey Bretton. 
 
 "I had my own life to consider!" flared 
 Claudia Merriwayne. 
 
 "You had your own life to consider," bowed 
 JafTrey Bretton. 
 
 "My people were very poor!" flared 
 Claudia Merriwayne. "They had made great 
 sacrifices to educate me! Already, even then, 
 my chances of future academic distinction 
 were the sole topics in my home!" 
 
 "Already," acquiesced JafTrey Bretton, 
 "your chances of future academic distinction 
 were the sole topics in your home! . . . 
 
 "So you see, Daphne," he turned and read- 
 dressed his little girl suddenly, "so you see 
 that, even across a mistake like that, people 
 may yet achieve real honors and much use 
 fulness!" 
 
 Like a man a little bit weary, his arms
 
 194 OLD-DAD 
 
 dropped down to his sides again, but his figure 
 still blocked the doorway. 
 
 "That is all, Clyde," he bowed. "And you 
 may rest assured, of course, that neither 
 Daphne nor Mr. Kaire nor I will ever repeat 
 the little anecdote which I have just quoted 
 unless Daphne herself shall contend that 
 Richard Wiltoner should know. ... Mr. 
 Burnarde, of course, needs no guarantees, hav 
 ing already proved with fearless courtesy that 
 your interests are his." 
 
 With frank cordiality he swung about and 
 held out his hand to Burnarde. 
 
 "The best of luck to you, Burnarde! in all 
 things!" he smiled. "If Fate had ordained 
 you to marry my little girl, you certainly 
 would have made a fine Friend-in-Law for me 
 as well as an honorable lord and master for 
 Daphne! . . . And after the first haste of the 
 honeymoon was over what good times we 
 would have had together you and I ! Winter 
 nights and an open fire! our books our 
 pipes a plate of apples a jug of cider 
 and the Classics! With Daphne sitting low 
 somewhere on a little stool just a little bit 
 off, somehow, on the edge of it all? Very
 
 OLD-DAD 195 
 
 beautiful? Very miraculous? Very soul- 
 satisfying to the eye service of your senses? 
 Darning your stockings, perhaps? Or fresh 
 ening up your second-best dress suit? With 
 her little bright head cocked ever so slightly 
 to one side, listening, yearning, starving for 
 the Pipe of Pan which neither you nor I, 
 Burnarde, will ever hear again nor recog 
 nize, probably, if we did. . . . You chaps, 
 Burnarde, whose hearts grow in the shape of 
 books you chaps who mix the best ink- 
 knowledge of the world with your own good 
 blood you love very purely, very ideally. 
 No man could fail to trust you. But, Youth, 
 Burnarde, brooks no rivals, either of work 
 or play. And in the decision between two 
 w T omen which more men have to make than 
 any woman, thank God, ever guesses you 
 have chosen, I think very wisely!" 
 
 Crackling with starch Miss Merriwayne 
 swung sharply around. 
 
 "I consider it exceedingly impertinent," 
 she affirmed, "for you to link my name with 
 Doctor Burnarde s in any way at just this 
 time! There is not the slightest excuse for it, 
 not the slightest justification."
 
 196 OLD-DAD 
 
 "It was Doctor Burnarde s mother that I 
 referred to," smiled Bretton, and bowed both 
 the Dean and the President from the room. 
 
 If the little gasp that slipped from his lips 
 expressed relaxation as did Daphne s sharp 
 sigh, or Kaire s somewhat breathy grin, such 
 relaxation was at least quite mutually cur 
 tailed. Without any hesitancy whatsoever the 
 cabin door closed very definitely behind Miss 
 Merriwayne, and from the clicking lock Jaf- 
 frey Bretton extracted the key and threw it 
 down on the mahogany table. 
 
 "Now for you, Sheridan Kaire!" he said. 
 
 "I am all here," grinned Kaire. "Also 
 incidentally, there are other keys to the cabin 
 door." 
 
 "Why, of course there are other keys to the 
 cabin door," conceded Bretton with perfect 
 good humor. From his own pocket as he 
 spoke he drew forth a bunch of keys, freed 
 them from their controlling ring, and tossed 
 them in confused and confusing muddle after 
 the cabin key. "Any of us can get out of this 
 cabin in two minutes," he confided. "But it 
 is not my intention that anybody should bolt 
 from it in much less time than that. Many
 
 OLD-DAD 197 
 
 a man has cooled his original purposes in the 
 time that it takes to fit an unfamiliar key to 
 a perfectly familiar lock. Also, while we 
 are rating incidental things, it does not seem 
 best to me that, with Lost Man and Alliman 
 waiting in the launch, we should run any risk 
 of being rushed from outside. If one of us 
 should sneeze, for instance or raise his voice 
 in any special emphasis? Alliman is so de 
 plorably impulsive with his shot-gun." 
 
 "I get you!" said Kaire. "There is not to 
 be any fuss." 
 
 "You get me perfectly," bowed Bretton. 
 "Now for the the discussion." Quite casu 
 ally he walked over to the mahogany table, 
 sat down, took a single interested glance at 
 the blue prints and swept them all aside. 
 "Let s all be seated," he said. 
 
 Very reluctantly Daphne came forward 
 into the light and slid down into the chair 
 opposite him. 
 
 "I I look so funny," she deplored. 
 
 "You certainly do," said her father. "Yet 
 I would be willing to wager," he smiled quite 
 unexpectedly, "that of all the variant ladies 
 who have been entertained in this room there
 
 198 OLD-DAD 
 
 has never been a lovelier one or one more 
 tempting." 
 
 "Sir?" bridled Kaire. With the dark flush 
 rising once again to his cheek-bones he sprang 
 forward to the table and perched himself on 
 the edge of it with a sinister sort of non 
 chalance. "Sir?" he repeated threateningly. 
 
 "Oh, don t concern yourself for a moment 
 with my daughter s tender sensibilities," 
 begged Bretton. "Their conservation you 
 must understand is still in my hands." 
 
 Somberly for a moment each man con 
 cerned himself with the lighting of a fresh 
 cigarette. 
 
 Then Bretton jerked back his chair. 
 
 "Just what was your plan, Kaire?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "I had planned," said Kaire, without an 
 instant s hesitation, "to take Daphne to the 
 first port we could make and marry her any 
 old way she wanted to be married." 
 
 "Why?" asked Bretton. 
 
 "Why?" snarled Kaire. "Why? Well, 
 what an extraordinary question! Why does 
 any man marry any woman?" 
 
 "For so many different reasons," said Bret-
 
 OLD-DAD 199 
 
 ton, "that it rather specially interested me 
 to hear just what yours were." 
 
 "Why, I m crazy about her!" flushed Kaire. 
 "Utterly mad! Never saw anything in my 
 life that I wanted so much!" 
 
 "Well you can t have her!" said Bretton. 
 
 "By the Lord! I will have her!" cried 
 Kaire. "Why why shouldn t I have her?" 
 he demanded. "Fate fairly threw her into 
 my arms just now, didn t it? I didn t know 
 you people were here ! I didn t know where 
 in thunder you people were! or how I was 
 going to find you with your blooming old 
 dog! Sitting on the beach I was, all in the 
 dark and and the girl comes crawling 
 right into my arms! Most shot her, I did! 
 thought she was some kind of a varmint! 
 Thought " 
 
 "Daphne " said her father. 
 
 With an impetuous gesture Kaire flung the 
 interruption aside. 
 
 "She d have run away with someone!" he 
 cried. "Not to-night, of course! But soon! 
 Next week! Next month! She was all 
 primed for it! And you can t stop em when 
 they once get started! not the high-spirited
 
 200 OLD-DAD 
 
 ones! not when they re hurt and mad, too! 
 And she might have done a heap sight worse 
 than run away with me! I m going to wor 
 ship her! I m going to give her everything 
 she wants! I m going to take her every place 
 she wants to go ! Why, six months from now 
 she won t even remember that she went to 
 the damned old college! Six months from 
 now she ll think that being expelled from 
 college was something she read in a comic 
 paper! And I m going to take her," he 
 said, with a suddenly lowered and curiously 
 sinister positiveness, "whether you like it or 
 not! because she has given me her word!" 
 
 "Is that true, Daphne?" asked her father. 
 
 Like a little white whirlwind Daphne 
 jumped to her feet. 
 
 "Why, of course it s true, Old-Dad!" she 
 stormed. "Live or die, sink or swim, I have 
 given Mr. Kaire my solemnest word that I 
 will marry him!" 
 
 "An absolutely unconditional word?" 
 probed Bretton. 
 
 "On one condition only!" triumphed 
 Daphne.
 
 OLD-DAD 201 
 
 "And that condition " drawled her 
 
 father. 
 
 "Is a matter of confidence between your 
 daughter and me," interposed Kaire hastily., 
 
 "I respect the confidence," said Bretton. 
 "But only a fool could fail to make half a 
 guess of what that condition was. . . . You 
 are keeping unconscionably sober." 
 
 "What I keep is my own business!" snapped 
 Kaire. 
 
 "Per haps," conceded Bretton. Quite 
 casually, as one whom neither Time nor Cir 
 cumstance particularly crowded, he picked up 
 an ivory paper cutter from the table and 
 studied it with some intentness before he 
 spoke again. 
 
 "Just what were you doing on Martha s 
 Island to-night, Kaire?" he asked. 
 
 "What were you doing yourself?" quizzed 
 Kaire. 
 
 "Do you trade your answer for mine?" 
 smiled Bretton. 
 
 "Certainly!" said Kaire. 
 
 "I was there because Martha sent for me," 
 said Bretton. "I thought she was in some sort 
 of trouble. I had no idea it was about you
 
 202 OLD-DAD 
 
 and the dog. . . . You were a brick about the 
 dog, Kaire!" he brightened abruptly. "And 
 I sha n t soon forget it! But you can t have 
 my daughter!" 
 
 Unflinching eye for unflinching eye, Sheri 
 dan Kaire answered the challenge. 
 
 "I most always look Martha up when I m 
 down this way," he confided informationally. 
 "I knew Martha in Paris twelve years ago." 
 
 "And loved Martha in Paris twelve years 
 ago?" murmured Bretton. 
 
 "Everybody loved Martha in Paris twelve 
 years ago, you know!" shrugged Kaire. 
 
 "No, I didn t know," said Bretton. "I was 
 in New Zealand about that time. It was at 
 an insane asylum in Chicago that I first saw 
 Martha." 
 
 "At an insane asylum?" frowned Kaire. "I 
 knew she d gone queer, but I never knew it 
 was as queer as that." 
 
 "It was quite as queer as that," said Bretton, 
 a bit dryly. "Right in the midst of one of 
 her best vaudeville acts, it seems, she went 
 into hysterics because a man in the front row 
 had on a red tie and on the way home to her 
 hotel she fainted in her carriage at a scarlet
 
 OLD-DAD 203 
 
 hat in some brilliantly lighted shop window. 
 So they shut her up. And a medical friend 
 of mine was quite a bit interested in the case. 
 Most extraordinarily simple his explanation 
 was. No Indian massacres involved, no hid 
 den Bluebeard Chambers. Something as 
 trivial, perhaps, as a kitten s cut foot bleeding 
 across a child s first white dress a nervous 
 injury so trivial that no one had stopped to 
 investigate it. ... But thirty years after 
 ward, when Life got ready to smash her, it 
 went back thirty years and smashed her 
 there! Seems sort of too bad though, * 
 mused Bretton, "to have to be shut up just 
 because you can t digest red. Some people, 
 you know, can t digest oysters. And at least 
 two friends of mine experience an almost 
 complete mental stoppage at the very mention 
 of Suffrage. Yet they are still at large! . . . 
 So we got Martha out of the asylum," he 
 quickened, "and reinvested her life and her 
 fortunes in an all-green jungle, where, ex 
 cept for a curious impression that I am her 
 benefactor, and the unspoken but doubtless 
 persistent apprehension that she may even yet 
 sight the crimson of a gay yacht-cushion or
 
 204 OLD-DAD 
 
 the flare of a tourist s sweater and revert to 
 chaos again, she seems to me perfectly 
 normal." With a little grim smack of his 
 lips he seemed to bite of! the end of his nar 
 rative. "And that, Sheridan Kaire," he 
 snapped, "is the full and complete account of 
 my acquaintance with Martha. . . . But 
 yours " he attested very slowly, very dis 
 tinctly, "was not the full and complete account 
 of yours!" 
 
 With his voice as quiet as a knife Kaire 
 swung round from his table corner. 
 
 "Since when, Mr. Bretton," he asked, "has 
 it been considered healthy for one man to call 
 another a liar?" 
 
 "Whatever worry you have about the 
 healthiness of anything," smiled Bretton, 
 "should concern yourself, I think rather 
 than me. . . . No one will ever shut me up," 
 he smiled, "because, like poor Martha, I also 
 am just a little bit color-mad! Seeing red 
 though isn t what bothers me, you under 
 stand? it s seeing yellow!" 
 
 "You think I have a yellow streak?" flushed 
 Kaire. 
 
 "Most of us have," smiled Bretton. "But
 
 OLD-DAD 205 
 
 
 
 yours at the moment looks to me unduly 
 broad!" 
 
 "Why, Old-Dad!" flamed Daphne. "How 
 can you speak so to to the man I m going 
 to marry? 
 
 "But you see you re not going to marry 
 him!" smiled her father. 
 
 "I tell you I am!" flamed Daphne. "I have 
 given my word!" 
 
 "And she ll keep it, too!" triumphed Kaire. 
 "High-strung kids always do, somehow! 
 Whatever else they smash china, hearts, laws 
 they never seem to break their words! 
 not before they re twenty, anyway!" he 
 grinned with sudden diablerie. "And 
 Daphne is only eighteen!" 
 
 "Hanged if you re not rather an amusing 
 cuss!" admitted Bretton. Very coolly he 
 narrowed his eyes to the insolent young face 
 before him. "I I recognize your charm! 
 Two parts devil to one part imp and all the 
 rest of it. The mysterious fascination of your 
 scar with every emotion you feel in the 
 World traveling up and down its white track 
 in an open car! Truly, I m sincerely sorry 
 about your health!"
 
 206 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Oh, quit twitting about my lungs!" snarled 
 Kaire. 
 
 "Lungs?" questioned Bretton with faintly 
 raised eyebrows. "Lungs? Oh, dear me 
 there are several other things about your 
 looks besides lungs that I don t like!" 
 Mercilessly, but not maliciously, he jumped 
 up and crossed to a spot directly confronting 
 Kaire. "With your waggish humor," he said, 
 "and your inherently sportsmanlike instincts, 
 you might have made a pretty good lad if 
 you d only started earlier." Piercingly his 
 eyes probed into Kaire s. "But my little girl," 
 he said, "isn t going to pay because you 
 didn t start earlier!" 
 
 With an oath Kaire sprang to his feet. 
 
 "I m not the only man in the world who s 
 been wild!" he cried. "And you know it 
 if anybody does!" 
 
 "You re the only man I think of at the 
 moment," said Bretton, "who isn t pretty 
 sorry about it when it comes to offering his 
 stale hand to the first real woman of his life." 
 
 "Is that so?" sneered Kaire. 
 
 "It s so," said Bretton very quietly. With 
 a single glance at Daphne he turned to Kaire
 
 OLD-DAD 207 
 
 again, struck another match, lit another 
 cigarette. "Love isn t an overcoat, you know, 
 Kaire," he said. "It s underclothes! The 
 White Linen of Life! And there seems to be 
 something peculiarly and particularly of 
 fensive to a fastidious body in being prof 
 fered personal linen which still retains even 
 the scent let alone the sweat of a previous 
 relation. . . . The Almighty, our Mothers, 
 and our Ministers, may forgive us our slovenly 
 dinginess or our careless laundrying, being 
 all of them more or less Museum Collectors 
 and interested inherently in our historical 
 values or the original fineness of our weave 
 or the ultimate endurance of our warp and 
 woof. But the Almighty and our Mothers 
 and our Ministers don t have to wear us, 
 Kaire! Not next to their skins! Don t have 
 to sleep with us wake with us live with us 
 die with us!" The hand that held the 
 cigarette trembled very slightly, the eyes that 
 glanced back again at Daphne were dark and 
 poignant with pain. "You are perfectly 
 right, Kaire! No man knows better than I 
 the mess that a chap may make of his life 
 nor how poor the fabric that I, personally
 
 208 OLD-DAD 
 
 in the common experience of men will have 
 to offer the woman I love. . . . Very worn 
 it will be, very frayed! but at least it has 
 been cleansed in the bitter tears of regret!" 
 
 "Is that so?" sneered Kaire. 
 
 "It is so," persisted Bretton. "And God 
 knows that neither Piety nor Wit nor anything 
 in the world but sheer Good Luck pulled me 
 ashore in time. But, like other half-drowned 
 men, I suppose, I had neither wit nor time 
 to choose my landing. Rocks, sands, valleys, 
 mountains, all looked like miracles to me. 
 So, mistaking austerity for purity, and severity 
 for integrity, I married a woman to whom 
 the slightest caress was a liberty, and marriage 
 itself a sacrilege. In being sorry for myself 
 I have not altogether, I trust, failed to be 
 sorry for her. We are made as we are made. 
 But it is only natural I suppose that I should 
 like my daughter to be a Good Lover. I 
 believe in Good Lovers. But no one can 
 make a good lover who is mated to a poor 
 one!" 
 
 "I ll risk the kind of Lover I am!" cried 
 Kaire. 
 
 "/ won tf affirmed Bretton.
 
 OLD-DAD 209 
 
 "There are also some things that I won t 
 do!" grinned Kaire. "I won t release your 
 daughter from her promise!" 
 
 "She doesn t love you, you know?" warned 
 Bretton. "Even granting perfectly frankly 
 that you have excited her wonderment, won 
 derment isn t love. We re all of us put to 
 gether on a more or less hasty plan, I suppose, 
 but just because some forgotten basting thread 
 gives us an odd tweak now and then doesn t 
 mean, you know, that the actual seams of our 
 existence are ripping any." 
 
 "I don t care what anything means," said 
 Kaire, "as long as Daphne has given me her 
 promise to marry me." 
 
 "But the promise is so hysterical," argued 
 Bretton. "The sublime adolescent idiocy of 
 the Boy on the Burning Deck, with fame for 
 one generation and caricature for eternity." 
 
 "I m not interested in eternity," said Kaire. 
 
 "What are you interested in?" asked Bret- 
 ton. 
 
 "In myself!" said Kaire. 
 
 Very soberly for a moment Bretton frowned 
 off into space. 
 
 "Kaire," he resumed at last rather quickly,
 
 210 OLD-DAD 
 
 "you are making a brutal mistake. Listen! 
 There is a lad up North who was made for 
 Daphne! a fine lad! a clean lad! With 
 young energies to match her young energies! 
 And young mysteries to mate her young mys 
 teries! And young problems to steady her 
 young problems! Across the mutual inno 
 cence of their little disaster it is absolutely 
 inevitable that each should have received a 
 peculiarly poignant sex-image of the other. 
 Except for you except for this who knows 
 but what 
 
 "There will be time enough for that when 
 I am through," said Kaire. "Six months 
 ten a year at the most." 
 
 "When you are through?" said Bretton very 
 quietly. "The tender soul of a young girl who 
 marries a man like you is not over-apt to 
 survive the experience." 
 
 Defiantly and unscrupulously Kaire de 
 livered his ultimatum. 
 
 "It is not my responsibility," he said, 
 "where any train goes after I get off!" 
 
 "That is your last word?" asked Bretton. 
 
 "It is my last word," grinned Kaire. 
 
 "And yours, Daphne?" quizzed her father.
 
 OLD-DAD 211 
 
 "I will not break my word!" persisted 
 Daphne. "I will not! I will not!" Her 
 cheeks were raging red as though with fever, 
 her eyes oddly aglint. "I will not! I will 
 not!" she repeated. 
 
 "All right then, Kaire," said Jaffrey Bret- 
 ton. "I m going to smash you!" 
 
 "Oh, no, you won t!" laughed Kaire. 
 "That s the limitation of good men like you! 
 You ll think you re going to smash me! 
 you ll have every intention indeed of smash 
 ing me! push me way to the edge! but 
 never quite over! Something won t let you! 
 Honor, I believe you call it." 
 
 "I am going to push you over the 
 edge," said Bretton. "I am going to send for 
 Martha." 
 
 "Martha?" cried Kaire. His face was 
 suddenly ashy gray. Then abruptly his laugh 
 rang out again. 
 
 "There hasn t been power in heaven or 
 earth for ten years," he scoffed, "that could 
 bring Martha out of her green jungle when 
 even so much as the smoke of a yacht showed 
 on her horizon! Even if she could slip by
 
 212 OLD-DAD 
 
 her attendant!" he scoffed, "or her Chinese 
 cook! or " 
 
 "Martha is in the passageway just out 
 side," pointed Bretton. "About three feet, I 
 should think, from where you are standing!" 
 
 "What?" staggered Kaire. 
 
 "And I am going to push Martha to the 
 edge and over," said Bretton very quietly. 
 "And you to the edge and over and jump in 
 after you with every wallowing truth I know 
 if by so doing, the little girl I begot in be 
 wilderment and ignored in indifference but 
 have found at last in love and understanding 
 remains on the safe side!" 
 
 With eyes half crazed Daphne stood star 
 ing from her father s grim face to Sheridan 
 Kaire s blanching features. 
 
 "Do you mean " she gasped, "that there is 
 another woman? Someone who has a a 
 claim? Someone who " 
 
 "We will let Martha tell her own story," 
 said Jaffrey Bretton. Very softly he stepped 
 to the table and began to rummage among the 
 loose keys. "I have tried not to act impul 
 sively," he said. With unmistakable signi 
 ficance he glanced back at Kaire. "It will
 
 OLD-DAD 213 
 
 take me at least a minute, Kaire," he said, "to 
 fit a key to this door. ... As I have re 
 marked once before many men have found 
 time to change their minds in a minute." 
 
 "I have better things to do in a minute than 
 change my mind!" boasted Kaire. As stealth 
 ily as a cat he slipped round the table to 
 Daphne and took her in his arms while Jaf- 
 frey Bretton tinkered with the lock. 
 
 "Oh, my little beautiful!" he implored 
 her. "My white white darling! My lily 
 girl! The only sweet the only decent love 
 I ve ever known! You won t fail me now, 
 will you? I have not failed you! I never 
 claimed," he besought her, "that there had 
 never been any other women! Surely you re 
 not going to hold any silly Past against me? 
 You, my good angel! My " Uncon 
 sciously his excited voice slipped from its 
 whisper. "From to-day on!" he vowed. 
 "From " 
 
 "From what time to-day on?" asked Bret- 
 ton a bit dryly. 
 
 Vaguely through the opening door loomed 
 the white figure of a woman with her elbow 
 crooked across her eyes. Except that the
 
 214 OLD-DAD 
 
 lamp in the cabin was not unduly bright she 
 might have been any normal person shielding 
 her dark-attuned optic nerves from some un 
 expected glare. Yet the tropical pallor that 
 gleamed both above and below the crooked 
 elbow was oddly suggestive of floridness, and 
 the faded muslin gown of a skirt-and-sleeve 
 fashion ten years outlawed, molded her sump 
 tuous figure with all the sleek sensuousness 
 of satin. 
 
 "Martha," said Jaffrey Bretton very gently, 
 "this cabin is hung with crimson, cushioned 
 with crimson, carpeted with crimson! Will 
 you still come if I ask you to?" 
 
 "It ees as I have said, Mr. Bret- ton," an 
 swered the faintly foreign voice. 
 
 Then Kaire with a cry sprang forward and 
 slammed the door in the woman s wincing 
 face. 
 
 "Stop! Stop, Bretton!" he begged. "Just 
 a minute! Just a minute! give me one tiny 
 little more minute to think!" His forehead 
 was beaded with sweat his hands shaking 
 like aspens. 
 
 "I have one more minute I will be very 
 glad to give you," said Bretton.
 
 OLD-DAD 215 
 
 Like a person distracted, Kaire stood star 
 ing all around him. Half askance from over 
 his shoulder his glanced flashed back at 
 Daphne, wavered an instant, and settled again 
 on her face with a curious sort of gasp. 
 
 "Do do you still hold to your word?" he 
 stammered. 
 
 Fevered, frightened, strangling back her 
 sobs as best she could, Daphne lifted her 
 strained but indomitable little face to his. 
 
 "I will not break my word!" she smiled. 
 
 On Sheridan Kaire s incongruous, dissolute 
 face, a smile as tortured-sweet as hers quick 
 ened for a single unbelievable instant and 
 was gone again. As one puzzled only, he 
 turned back to Bretton, and stood staring 
 almost vacantly into the older man s impa 
 tient eyes. Then quite abruptly he turned 
 and started toward the door. 
 
 "I I feel a little faint," he said. "A little 
 queer. ... I will be back in a moment!" 
 
 With a sharp bang the door shut behind 
 him. In the passage outside they heard a 
 single rough word, a woman s imperious pro 
 test, the soft thud of feet on a thick carpet, 
 and a cabin boy s shrill calL
 
 216 OLD-DAD 
 
 On the carved mahogany shelf in the cabin 
 the clock went on about its business one 
 minute three five ten. Through the open 
 portholes a faint breeze sucked at the crimson 
 silk curtains, and ripple to creak, and creak 
 to ripple, the houseboat yearned to the tide 
 and the tide to the houseboat. 
 
 Daphne s eyes never left the clock. 
 Weirdly exultant, excitantly heroic, she kept 
 the ill-favored tryst. 
 
 Blurred in the smoke of his cigarette, Jaf- 
 frey Bretton s vivid white head merged like 
 a half-erased drawing into the big shimmer 
 ing mirror behind him. It was just as well, 
 perhaps, that the twist of his mouth was hid 
 den from Daphne s eyes. 
 
 There was no sound of voices in the outer 
 passageway to herald Sheridan Kaire s re 
 turn: just a little stumble on the edge of a 
 rug an unwonted fumble with the door 
 handle. It wasn t defiance that backed him 
 up now against the support of the wainscoat- 
 ing, but a very faint uncertainty in his legs. 
 There was nothing uncertain, however, about 
 his face. Geniality, not to say, jocularity,
 
 OLD-DAD 217 
 
 wreathed it from ear to ear and from brow 
 to chin. 
 
 "Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, 
 dear dear people," he beamed. "But a 
 Host has so many responsibilities. . . . Over 
 seeing the pantries and the the libraries and 
 the ladies!" he beamed. "Why why, I can t 
 help my way with the ladies!" he turned and 
 explained with half-mocking anxiety to Jaf- 
 frey Bretton s absolutely inscrutable face. 
 "Always, ever since I was a little boy," he 
 deprecated, "I ve been the Village cut-up! 
 So was my father before me, and his father 
 before before me. Too bad, isn t it?" he 
 questioned sharply. "Such a nice family! 
 And so lively!" At an unexpected glimpse 
 of his face in the mirror he turned back to 
 meet Daphne s staring face. "Now this scar 
 of mine, darling darling," he confided dra 
 matically, "you want to know where I got 
 it? All the ladies always want to know where 
 I got it! Just as soon as a lady gets up her 
 courage to ask me about it," he chuckled, 
 "then I always know she s really beginning 
 to think of me! You asked if I got it in a 
 brave war, " he chuckled. "Sure I got it in
 
 218 OLD-DAD 
 
 a brave war. Only the brave deserve 
 affairs," he parodied lightly. "It was in 
 Smyrna," he -confided, "when I was eighteen. 
 I I made a little poem about it: 
 
 There was a young Princess of Smyrna, 
 
 Of love I endeavored to learn her, 
 
 But her father in hate cleft a seam through my pate, 
 
 Now wasn t that the deuce of a turn-a ? 
 
 Precipitately and without the slightest warn 
 ing he plunged down into a chair and began 
 to whimper maudlinly while with one uncer 
 tain ringer tip he traced and retraced the 
 twitching, zig-zagged scar. "It it isn t nice, 
 is it?" he babbled idiotically. "And I was 
 such a pretty boy? . . . Ladies shouldn t ask 
 such questions," he babbled. "Not just as 
 you re going to kiss em. It it makes dead 
 faces floating between! It isn t nice! Oh, 
 Daphne darling darling " 
 
 But with a little scream of release Daphne s 
 hand was already on the door knob. 
 
 "Oh, come quick, Old-Dad!" she cried. 
 "It s all over! It s all canceled! He s broken 
 his promise! He s "
 
 OLD-DAD 219 
 
 In a single bound her father was at her 
 side. 
 
 "Oh, I hope I haven t said anything that 
 I shouldn t have!" babbled Kaire. With a 
 desperate effort he struggled to his feet and 
 raised his arms after the manner of one who 
 is just about to lead a cheer. "Now, all to 
 gether, ladies and gentlemen!" he cried. 
 
 "There was a young lady from Smyrna, 
 Of of Smyrna " 
 
 Across his flaccid mouth the odd little smile 
 tightened suddenly in a single poignant flash 
 of bewilderment and pain. "Oh, you Little 
 Good Works Business!" he grinned. "You 
 you " 
 
 Then, before their startled eyes, he pitched 
 over headlong on the table, gave a queer 
 twitch of his shoulders, and lay very quiet, 
 with a little flush of blood spreading redder 
 and redder from his lips. 
 
 But before Jaffrey Bretton could snatch 
 Daphne from the sight, her overtaxed brain 
 had collapsed into delirium. Dodging down 
 the narrow passageway with the dreadful
 
 220 OLD-DAD 
 
 little burden in his arms he stumbled almost 
 immediately on Martha s crouching figure. 
 
 "Martha!" he cried. "There s something 
 redder than curtains in the cabin back there! 
 Run and get Kaire s man!" 
 
 "Kaire s man?" scoffed the woman shrilly. 
 Robbed in that single instant of all her in 
 hibition she turned and sped madly for the 
 reddest thing that she would ever know, 
 every thought in her awakened brain, every 
 flash of her jeweled hands keyed suddenly to 
 service. 
 
 Close behind her a cabin boy came hurry 
 ing. Champagne and crystal glasses were on 
 his tray. 
 
 Roused from a half-completed nap Kaire s 
 man came running to the scene. 
 
 Like an old hound scenting disaster Lost 
 Man himself loomed unexpectedly in the 
 doorway. With his great tunic-swathed 
 height, his sharply dilating nostrils, he seemed 
 bristling suddenly with some strange new sort 
 of authority. For a single instant his beetling 
 brows glowered to the stark, startled faces 
 around him. Then out of God knows what 
 Stained-glass memories out of God knows
 
 OLD-DAD 221 
 
 what chanceled associations he burst forth 
 resonantly into the opening lines of the Epis 
 copal burial service. 
 
 " ( I am the Resurrection and the Life, 
 saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live. And 
 whosoever liveth 
 
 With a gasp from his own frazzled nerves 
 Jaffrey Bretton pushed mercilessly past him. 
 
 "Oh, cut it out, Lost Man," he cried. 
 "This isn t death yet! Kaire s man knows 
 just what to do, and has got a chance to do 
 it probably even one or more times yet! 
 Go get the launch ready, you and Alliman! 
 If there s nothing here we can do, we ll go 
 quick!" 
 
 "Where?" stared Lost Man. 
 
 "Back to our own island, you idiot!" 
 snapped Bretton. "And pack up everything 
 we ve got! And catch that coast steamer in 
 the morning! We re going North," he paled, 
 "as fast as we can get there! I want a brain 
 specialist for my little girl!" Stumbling 
 along after Lost Man with his babbling 
 burden in his arms, he stepped down into the 
 waiting launch.
 
 222 OLD-DAD 
 
 Already with his gnarled calloused hands 
 Alliman the outlaw was wringing strange 
 cries from the reluctant engine. Up from a 
 somber shadow in the bow the brown khaki 
 lady lifted a startled but unquestioning face. 
 
 "Let me hold her!" insisted Lost Man. "I 
 know how to hold em the little lambs!" 
 Like some vaguely parodied picture of "The 
 Good Shepherd" the old man gathered the 
 little limp figure into his arms, and retreated 
 to the stern of the boat. 
 
 Half resentful, half relieved, Bretton hesi 
 tated an instant and then merged himself into 
 the shadowy bow. 
 
 With a grunt of triumph Alliman started 
 the launch gulfward. With creaks and 
 groans and puffy sighs the old engine rallied 
 to the task. Except for the chop of waves 
 against the bow, the trickle of tides at the 
 stern, no other sound broke the black silence 
 except Lost Man s crooning monotone. 
 
 "There there there there there," 
 crooned Lost Man. "There there there 
 there there!" When he wasn t saying 
 "There there there," he seemed to be try 
 ing to sing. Very laboriously, very painstak-
 
 OLD-DAD 223 
 
 ingly, word by word and note by note he was 
 straining very evidently to dig up something 
 from his memory. 
 
 "Bring to little children (he struggled) 
 
 Visions sweet of Thee, 
 Guard the sailors tossing (he quavered) 
 On the the deep blue sea." 
 
 Along the whole dark shadowy length of the 
 launch, the Outlaw s face alone shone wanly 
 bright and reasonably clear-featured in the 
 flare from the engine. Bloodless as the salt- 
 pork that he fed on, dank-haired as the 
 swamps and glades that encompassed him, 
 brooding on Heaven knows what Past or 
 what Future a single convulsive tremor 
 passed his pipe-clenched lips. 
 
 "Say, Boss," he said, "on them home runs 
 of Baker s, was they straight-away hits? Or 
 did they go over some fence?"
 
 Ill 
 
 IT WAS the Northern March very cold, 
 very snowy, very blustery, when Daphne 
 woke from her last bad dream. 
 
 Brisk, bleak, absolutely literal, the frosted 
 roofs and gables of a pleasant suburban land 
 scape gleamed sociably at her through every 
 casement window. 
 
 No squawking pelicans screeched like 
 steam-whistles into her splitting eardrums. 
 No interminable flights of sea gulls dragged 
 their sharp-feathered wingpoints across her 
 naked eyeballs. On the slime and stench of 
 a dead shark s body her little foot had forever 
 stopped slipping. 
 
 "Why why, how perfectly extraordi 
 nary!" woke Daphne. 
 
 It seemed to be a pretty room. A little 
 too neat, perhaps, a little too impersonal, to 
 be one s very own. But by no means as 
 plushily impersonal as a hotel, and by no 
 means as poison-neat as a hospital. 
 
 334
 
 OLD-DAD 225 
 
 "Wherever in the world am I?" puz 
 zled Daphne. 
 
 Very cautiously, very experimentally, she 
 began to investigate her most immediate sur 
 roundings. 
 
 "I am at least in a very pretty pale blue 
 wadded silk wrapper," she discovered with 
 eminent satisfaction. "Also, on an astonish 
 ingly comfortable couch with at least a 
 hundred pillows. . . . Oh I hope the bow 
 on my pigtail matches my pale blue wrap; 
 per!" she quickened expectantly. But there 
 was no pigtail. Shockingly to her uplifted 
 hands her short-cropped head loomed round 
 and crisp and fluffy as a great worsted ball. 
 "Oh, dear oh, dear oh, dear!" she gasped. 
 "If I am dead and born again I am a boy!" 
 Wilting down discouragedly into her "hun 
 dred pillows" one slender hand dropped 
 weakly to the floor. "Life is very empty," she 
 said. "Everything in life is very empty 
 everything." Along her sluggish spine a 
 curious little thrill passed suddenly. "There 
 is a nose in my hand!" she gasped. "A lovin 
 nose! Creep- Mouse!" she cried out desper-
 
 226 OLD-DAD 
 
 ately. "Is it possible that it s your lovin 
 nose?" 
 
 "Perfectly possible!" thudded Creep- 
 Mouse s essentially practical tail. "Perfectly 
 possible," swished and fawned the bashful 
 little fur body. 
 
 "This is certainly very extraordinary," 
 struggled Daphne. "Instead of being any 
 thing that I thought it was, it is quite evidently 
 some sort of a bewitchment. I am a boy! 
 But Creep-Mouse is still Creep-Mouse! I 
 who went to sleep real have waked up in a 
 Fairy Story! But what Fairy Story?" she 
 shivered. "And what page?" 
 
 Quite inadvertently her eyes strayed to the 
 little white table at the head of her couch. 
 In the middle of the table shone a silver bell. 
 
 "It would be interesting," mused Daphne, 
 "to ring that bell and see who comes! If it s 
 the Hunch- Backed Pony then I ll know, 
 of course, that I m in the Russian Fairy book. 
 And if it s Snow White " Very cautiously 
 she struggled up from her pillows and 
 reached for the silver bell. "But I must ring 
 you very little-y," she faltered in her weak- 
 ness. "So that whatever comes will surely
 
 OLD-DAD 227 
 
 be very little." Then with an impetuous 
 wilfulness that surprised even herself she 
 grabbed up the bell with both hands and rang 
 it and rang it and rang it! 
 
 In the corridor somewhere a door slammed 
 and footsteps came running running! Her 
 doorhandle turned! A portiere wrenched 
 aside! 
 
 "It s the seven bears story life size!" she 
 screamed. And opened her eyes to Richard 
 Wiltoner. Like a silver bomb the bell 
 whizzed by his head. "Get out of my room!" 
 she screamed. "Get out of my room before 
 I m expelled again!" 
 
 "Silly!" laughed Richard Wiltoner. "I m 
 visiting in your house! They told me to an 
 swer your bell!" 
 
 "My house?" collapsed Daphne. "Don t 
 blame this house on me! I don t even know 
 where I am!" 
 
 "Why, you re in your own home!" laughed 
 Richard Wiltoner. "Just wait a minute and 
 I ll call your people. . . . Everybody rushed 
 outdoors to help a horse that fell on the ice." 
 
 "Fell on the ice? How nice," mused 
 Daphne. "Why why, I can rhyme again!"
 
 228 OLD-DAD 
 
 she exulted suddenly with softly clapping 
 hands. "Why, I d forgotten all about it!" 
 Then a little bit bewilderedly the white brow 
 clouded. "Richard," she asked, "you you 
 said everybody rushed out. What do you 
 mean everybody? 
 
 "Why, your father, Mr. Bretton," said 
 Richard, "and Mrs. Bretton." 
 
 " Mrs. Bretton? " jumped Daphne. Very 
 limply she sank back into her pillows again. 
 "Oh, I knew it," she said. "I ve waked in 
 the wrong story!" Quite severely she seemed 
 to hold Richard responsible for the mistake. 
 "Oh no, Richard," she corrected him. "In 
 the story I belong in there s no Mrs. Bretton. 
 Just Mr. Bretton! Mr. Jafrrey Bretton! a 
 tall man," she endeavored to illustrate, "with 
 snow-white hair!" 
 
 "The very lad," laughed Richard, "and 
 Mrs. Bretton. She s a brick! She s got red 
 hair. Oh, I didn t mean to be funny!" he 
 apologized hastily. 
 
 "Funny?" flamed Daphne. Flushing, pal 
 ing, flushing again a dozen conflicting emo 
 tions seemed surging through her brain.
 
 OLD-DAD 229 
 
 "Richard?" she questioned. "Have you ever 
 lost anything?" 
 
 "I ve lost both my parents," said Richard, 
 "and three sisters and I don t remember any 
 of them." 
 
 "Haven t you anything left?" asked 
 Daphne. 
 
 "I ve got one brother," said Richard. "The 
 crippled brother, you know? And my horse, 
 Brainstorm." 
 
 "Do you love them?" questioned Daphne. 
 
 "I love Brainstorm," said Richard. 
 
 "I ve had trouble, too," sighed Daphne. 
 "I ve lost my father and my hair." 
 
 "Someone seems to have found your 
 father," laughed Richard in spite of himself. 
 "But whatever in the world have you done 
 with your hair?" 
 
 "That s just it, Richard," said Daphne. 
 "Will you look in the top bureau drawer?" 
 
 Flushing forty colors Richard opened the 
 top bureau drawer. He was handsome 
 enough when he wasn t embarrassed. But 
 under embarrassment he glowed like stained 
 glass with a light behind it. "There are rib-
 
 230 OLD-DAD 
 
 bons here," he pawed. "And and things! 
 But no hair!" 
 
 "Oh, isn t it awful?" shivered Daphne. 
 "Well, is there a hair brush? I would so like 
 to look all right when my my stepmother 
 
 comes." 
 
 "Just as though she hadn t seen you looking 
 all kinds of wrong for weeks and weeks!" 
 scoffed Richard. But very obediently he 
 brought the hair brush. 
 
 "Just where do you think you d better be 
 gin?" worried Daphne. 
 
 "I?" stammered Richard. "I?" With a 
 wild little lunge he commenced the attack. 
 
 "My! But you re bumpy!" winced Daphne. 
 "Don t you think that maybe it would be 
 better to use the bristly side of the brush?" 
 
 "Oh, I say!" apologized Richard, "I am 
 rattled!" With reconstructed acumen he re 
 sumed the task. 
 
 "Oh, MafVnice," purred Daphne. "In a 
 book I was reading there was the funniest 
 thing the husband in it was always brushing 
 his wife s hair." 
 
 "How funny!" acquiesced Richard. 
 
 "Oh awfully funny," purred Daphne. "I
 
 OLD-DAD 231 
 
 guess there s a good deal more to this mar 
 riage-business," she observed sagely, "than 
 some of us had supposed." 
 
 "Very likely," admitted Richard. 
 
 "Less nonsense, I mean," reflected Daphne. 
 "But more hair-brushing and putting away 
 winter clothes, and " 
 
 "Oh, I wish I had a wife," hooted Richard, 
 "to put away my winter clothes!" 
 
 "I wish you had!" laughed Daphne. For 
 the first time her mind went back to her little 
 college tragedy with purely historical interest 
 instead of pain. "Oh, I wish you had! That 
 dress suit you bumped my nose against 
 smelled so strong of camphor I couldn t get 
 it out of my nostrils all winter! Why, we re 
 both laughing!" she exclaimed with sudden 
 astonishment. 
 
 "Why shouldn t we?" argued Richard Wil- 
 toner. In the midst of the reflection a most 
 curious expression flashed across his eyes. 
 
 "Wouldn t it have been funny," he said, "if 
 you had married me that time I asked 
 you?" 
 
 "We d have fought like cats and dogs, I 
 suppose," said Daphne.
 
 232 OLD-DAD 
 
 "But at least," laughed Richard, "you 
 would have been putting away my winter 
 clothes just about now." 
 
 "And you " retaliated Daphne. 
 
 "I m already brushing your hair!" 
 laughed the boy. 
 
 "Let s never marry anybody," suggested 
 Daphne. "Not for years!" 
 
 "I can t!" said Richard. "Not for years 
 and years and years! not to make a girl com 
 fortable, I mean ! There won t be any money. 
 . . . There s my brother, you know; and I ve 
 got so many animals. . . . It s queer about 
 animals," he stammered, "you you can t fail 
 the old ones when they re old, and you can t 
 fail the young ones when they re young. It s 
 like any other kind of family, I suppose," he 
 smiled. "All fun and all responsibility! But 
 never any time! And never any money!" 
 Quite furiously he resumed the^hair-brushing. 
 "Oh, after all," he remarked, "this isn t so 
 awfully different from getting the snarls out 
 of Brainstorm s mane. Only Brainstorm s 
 mane is brown. And yours?" With a cry 
 of sheer joy he stood off and surveyed his 
 handiwork. "And yours " he laughed,
 
 OLD-DAD 233 
 
 "looks like a bunch of short-stemmed jon 
 quils!" 
 
 "Oh, how awful!" cried Daphne. 
 
 "No, it s cunning," flushed Richard. 
 
 A little bit teased by the laugh, Daphne 
 met her own embarrassment with a fresh com 
 mand. 
 
 "Oh, please run quick now," she begged, 
 "and tell my people as you call them 
 that a Lady-Who-Has-Been-Long-Away 
 sends her love and is home again!" 
 
 "You re too slow with your invitation," 
 called her father s voice from the doorway. 
 "We ve already arrived!" With a most curi 
 ous merge of excitement and serenity Jaffrey 
 Bretton and the Intruding Lady walked into 
 the room. 
 
 "How do you do?" said Daphne, with the 
 faintest possible tinge of formality. 
 
 "Why, very well indeed," said her father, 
 a bit casually. "How s yourself?" His more 
 immediate attention at the moment seemed 
 fixed on Richard and the waving hair brush. 
 
 "Oh, I m all right," drawled Daphne very 
 evenly. Then, with all the sudden tempestu 
 ous intensity of a child, she threw her arms
 
 234 OLD-DAD 
 
 in the air. "Only, I don t see even yet," she 
 cried, "just what Richard Wiltoner is doing 
 here." 
 
 With a quite unexplainable laugh her 
 father dropped down on the edge of her 
 couch. 
 
 "Why it s it s about potatoes!" he laughed. 
 "Richard is getting to be some farmer! He s 
 written a magazine article about some new 
 potato scheme of his. It s very interesting! 
 I like experiments! I m going to finance it. 
 Not much, you know, but just a little. Just 
 enough to take the strain off and leave the 
 push on. We ll go over in the spring when 
 it s planting time," he began to laugh all over 
 again, "and see that the experiment is started 
 properly." 
 
 Quite severely Daphne drew back into her 
 pillows. "I don t think it s very nice of you, 
 Old-Dad," she said, "to laugh so at Richard s 
 farming. Farming is a very very noble pro 
 fession, I think." 
 
 "It certainly is," conceded her father. 
 
 "And have you rabbits, Richard, as well as 
 potatoes?" she questioned with unbroken
 
 OLD-DAD 235 
 
 gravity. "And will there be jonquils? And 
 new pigs?" 
 
 "There s liable to be most everything by 
 that time," admitted Richard. 
 
 "Oh, all right then," brightened Daphne. 
 "I think I ll come, too! I ve thought a good 
 deal about potatoes, myself!" With a little 
 sigh, half fatigue, half contentment, she 
 glanced up at her father just in time to in 
 tercept the glance of "white magic" that 
 passed between him and the Intruding Lady. 
 In an instant her little spine stiffened again. 
 "Only Richard," she smiled up bravely, 
 "we unmarried people must surely stand by 
 each other! Even after you go away maybe 
 you ll write me about the rabbits and things? 
 It s just a little bit lonely sometimes," quiv 
 ered the smile, "to be the only unmarried 
 person in the house." 
 
 With a perceptible quiver of her own smile 
 the Intruding Lady came forward and 
 dropped down on the couch just in front of 
 Old-Dad. 
 
 "Oh, Little Girl," she said, "don t you 
 think you re ever ever going to like me 
 any?"
 
 236 OLD-DAD 
 
 "Why, I like you now," whispered Daphne. 
 
 "And I d like to like you lots only " 
 
 A bit worriedly the fluffy head turned and 
 re-turned on its pillows. "Only I don t 
 understand," fretted Daphne, "about your 
 having so many honeymoons." 
 
 "So many honeymoons? " smiled the In 
 truding Lady. "Why, I m thirty-two years 
 old! And this is the very first honeymoon 
 I ve ever had in my life!" 
 
 "Why why, you said you were on a honey 
 moon down South!" frowned Daphne. 
 
 "So I did!" laughed the Intruding Lady. 
 "And so I was! But I never said it was my 
 honeymoon !" 
 
 "Old-Dad thought it was your honey 
 moon!" accused Daphne. 
 
 "Yes I meant him to!" laughed the In 
 truding Lady. "Just for a little while I meant 
 him to! ... We d had such a quarrel ever 
 since the winter before! Love at first sight 
 it seemed to be! and quarrel at first sight 
 too!" 
 
 "Oh, dear me dear me," worried Daphne. 
 "The more I hear about this Love the more
 
 OLD-DAD 237 
 
 complicated it seems. There s even more 
 study to it I believe than going to college." 
 
 "Oh, a great deal more study to it than 
 going to college!" attested the Intruding 
 Lady. 
 
 "But whose honeymoon was it?" per 
 sisted Daphne. 
 
 "Why, it was the honeymoon," mused the 
 Intruding Lady, "of a very silly little chorus 
 girl and an unduly wise New York mag 
 nate. He was very much pleased with 
 everything about her, it seemed, except her 
 Grammar so I was brought along to mend 
 the Grammar. Now wasn t that a perfectly 
 idiotic thing to do?" she turned quite unblush- 
 ingly to ask Old-Dad. "Where there are so 
 many perfectly beautiful things to learn on 
 a honeymoon to waste any time learning 
 Grammar?" Oh, of course, I know perfectly 
 well" she re-turned a bit quickly to Daphne 
 "that it was very wrong indeed of me to 
 run away from them that it caused the old 
 magnate, at least, a considerable amount of 
 anxiety. Only, of course, I never dreamed 
 for a moment," she acknowledged, "that the 
 yacht would go off without me! I merely
 
 238 OLD-DAD 
 
 thought," she blushed, "I merely heard," she 
 blushed, "that that was Jaffrey Bretton s 
 Island." 
 
 "And you found him with me!" giggled 
 Daphne, "all cuddled up in the sand." 
 
 "Yes," blushed the Intruding Lady. 
 
 With the cloud still on her brow Daphne 
 studied the Intruding Lady s face with an en 
 tirely brand-new interest. 
 
 "But, how ever in the world," she de 
 manded, "could anybody quarrel with my 
 father?" 
 
 As though wanting to give full considera 
 tion to the question, the Intruding Lady 
 glanced back at her husband before she es 
 sayed to face Daphne again. 
 
 "Why, really," she answered, "don t you 
 suppose that perhaps it s because he s so 
 tall?" 
 
 "Hardly," said Daphne. 
 
 "Well, then maybe," mused the Intruding 
 Lady, "it s because he s so so funny?" 
 
 "Not at all," said Daphne. 
 
 "Well just possibly of course," smiled 
 the Intruding Lady, "it s because I have red 
 hair!"
 
 OLD-DAD 239 
 
 "Now you re talking!" said JafTrey Bretton. 
 
 But no smile ruffled Daphne s grav/*y. 
 
 "Were you a a sort of a teacher?" she 
 questioned. 
 
 "Yes, a sort of a teacher, " admitted the 
 Intruding Lady. 
 
 "Where?" asked Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, on houseboats and yachts and things," 
 smiled the Intruding Lady. "Just a sort of 
 traveling teacher. That s why I didn t quite 
 understand your father at first I suppose," 
 she acknowledged. "Our lives were so far 
 apart." 
 
 "Do you think you understand me?" whis 
 pered Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, I understand you perfectly," smiled 
 the Intruding Lady. 
 
 "Then what are you going to teach me?" 
 quivered Daphne. "There are so many things 
 I want to know! Who Lost Man was ! Why 
 people like the Outlaw are! Did did Sheri 
 dan Kaire break his word on purpose to 
 free me?" 
 
 From the Intruding Lady s merry eyes a 
 most astonishing tear rolled suddenly. 
 
 "First of all, Little Girl," she said, "I m go-
 
 240 OLD-DAD 
 
 ing to try very very hard to teach you to 
 love me!" 
 
 "I m I m enjoying my first lesson very 
 much thank you," smiled Daphne faintly. 
 
 "Heaven bless my soul!" cried her father 
 quite abruptly, "I d forgotten all about smok 
 ing!" Adroitly with match and cigarette he 
 proceeded to remedy the omission, brooding 
 thoughtfully all the while on his daughter s 
 wistful young face the positive, generous 
 womanliness of his own chosen mate the 
 splendid clean-limbed, clean-souled promise 
 of the young lad before him. With more 
 emotion than he cared to show he bent down 
 suddenly and gathered Creep-Mouse into his 
 arms. "There there isn t a man in the 
 world," he affirmed, "who has as good a as 
 good a dog as I have!" 
 
 " Dog? " deprecated Richard Wiltoner 
 quite unexpectedly. " Family I guess is 
 what you mean !" 
 
 "But even yet," questioned Daphne wor 
 riedly of the Intruding Lady, "everything s 
 been so sudden and queer even yet I don t 
 quite seem to realize just how you figure in 
 my story?"
 
 OLD-DAD 241 
 
 "Why, I don t suppose I figure at all," 
 smiled the Intruding Lady very modestly, 
 
 "except in so far as I do my bit towards 
 making a Happy Ending. 
 
 " Happy Ending? quickened Jaffrey 
 
 Bretton. "Why this is just the Happy 
 Beginning!" 
 
 THE END.
 
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