Affair in Araby | Page 3

sees around here. My only chance for amusement is to get up a
flirtation with some of them. I don't think it would be difficult--they
don't seem a bit shy. Only," he added, with a sigh, "I'm getting too old."
"Yes, dad; I'm afraid you are," agreed Susie. "You wouldn't really
enjoy it."
"'My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are
gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!'"
quoted Nell, in a solemn voice.
"Don't you be too sure!" retorted her father, threateningly, wheeling
around upon her. "There's no telling what I may be driven to, if I'm
kept imprisoned here much longer! 'Though I look old,'--"
"'Yet I am strong and lusty,'" finished Sue. "Of course you are, dad, and
you don't look old, either. Why," gazing up at him critically, "you don't
look a day over forty!"
"Don't try to bamboozle your Pa, Susie," laughed Rushford. "I can see
through you! You'll be trying to make me believe next that you want a
stepmother."
"I would if it would make you any happier, dad."
Her father gazed down for an instant into her pseudo-serious face, then
caught her in his arms and squeezed her.

"What're you up to?" he demanded. "Trying to make a fool of your old
dad? Why, Susie, own up,--you'd scratch out the eyes of the best
woman in the world if she dared to look twice at me!"
"Of course I would!" admitted Susie, instantly. "You know as well as I
do, dad, that even the best woman in the world isn't good enough for
you."
"Let's go across to the other hotel, dad," suggested Nell, with a
nonchalance intended to conceal the fact that this was the point she and
Susie had been aiming at from the very first.
Her father released Susie and stared at his other daughter in
amazement.
"What on earth for?" he demanded.
"Oh, everybody seems to be over there--you've noticed--"
"Yes, I've noticed that it's running over with the rag-tag and bob-tail of
all Europe! If you think I'll butt into that Bedlam, my dear child, you're
badly mistaken. I'd rather live with the freaks in a museum."
"But it's so quiet here."
"I'm glad of it! Besides, I thought you wanted quiet?"
"Only for your sake--don't you see, we're trying our best to please you.
A moment ago, you said you wanted excitement."
"I do; but it must be excitement with an object. I haven't got any use for
the infernal, purposeless chattering I hear all around me every time I go
out on the dyke. Damn a man, anyhow, who can't find anything better
to do than to run around to summer-resorts and flirt with other men's
wives! I tell you, girls, I want to get back to New York!"
"Give us another month, dad!" pleaded Sue, catching his arm again, as
he stamped up and down. "You know that you promised to stay with us
two months, at the very least. We can't go around without a chaperon."

Her father's face relaxed as he looked down at her, and he smiled
grimly.
"So we get down to the real reason, at last, do we?" he queried. "I
thought all this solicitude for my health was a trifle unnatural. I'm
useful as a chaperon, am I? See here, girls, I can put in my time more
profitably at the stock exchange, and have a heap more fun. I'll hire a
chaperon for you, or half a dozen, if you want them, and pull out for
New York. What do you say? I don't know the first principles of the
business, anyway."
"Oh, yes, you do, dad!" protested Susie. "You're a perfectly ideal
chaperon."
"I am? The ideal chaperon, then, must be one who never does any
chaperoning!"
"That's it, exactly!" cried Nell, clapping her hands delightedly. "How
quickly you see things, dad!"
"So that's it!" and he stood for a moment looking darkly at his offspring.
"Well, you girls are old enough to take care of yourselves. If you can't,
it's high time you were learning how!"
"Oh, we're perfectly able to take care of ourselves," Sue assured him.
"You mustn't worry about us for a moment, dad."
"I'm not likely to. But, in that case, why do you want me along at all?"
"Why, don't you see, dad, it's you who give us the odour of
respectability. By ourselves, we should be social outcasts, impossible,
not to be spoken to--except by men. It isn't convenable."
"Oh, I see," said Rushford. "The first great principle of European
society seems to be, 'Think the worst of every one.'"
"Not precisely, dad; but no unmarried woman may venture outside the
circumference of the family circle. That's the great European

convention--the basic