Affair in Araby | Page 4

principle of her social order."
"A sort of 'tag, you're it,' game, isn't it? The family circle is a kind of
dead line--the ring of fire which keeps out the wild beasts. Step over,
and you're lost!"
"Of course," said Nell, "it is only to unmarried women that the rule
applies."
"Oh, certainly," assented her father. "Married women are allowed more
latitude--in fact, from such French novels as I've read, I should infer
that they usually swing clear around the circle! It's a reaction, I suppose;
a sort of compensation for the privations of their youth. I don't like it.
Let's go home!"
"But your promise, dad!" pleaded Sue, permitting the faintest suspicion
of moisture to appear in her dark eyes. "And you know you really do
need a vacation."
Her father looked down at her, saw the moisture, and surrendered.
"You're a humbug," he said; "and this vacation business is another. A
man spends two or three months loafing around because somebody tells
him he's looking badly and ought to take a rest; and before he knows it,
he's accumulated so much rust in his system that he never gets it all out
again. His machinery creaks more or less for the rest of his life. The
wise man postpones his vacation to the next world."
"Well, let's call it a jaunt," suggested Susie. "A jaunt somehow implies
hurry and bustle, with plenty of exercise."
"And I don't know which is the bigger fool," pursued her father, not
heeding her; "the fellow who takes a vacation every year on his own
hook, or the one who permits his daughters to drag him away from his
comfortable home and his morning paper and the business which gives
him his interest in life, and maroon him in a desert of a Dutch
watering-place, where there's absolutely nothing for a self-respecting
man to do but smoke himself to death and wait for a paper which never

comes till day after to-morrow!"
"It sounds terribly involved, but I'll help you reason it out, dad, any
time you like," said Susie, obligingly. "And you'll stay, won't you,
dear?"
"Oh, I'll stay, since your heart's so set upon it. I'll try to bear up and
find a diversion of some kind and not rust out any more than I can help.
I might dig in the sand or make mud pies or play mumbly-peg. But I
draw the line at plunging into that whirlpool across the street. My bed
here is nearly as comfortable as the one at home, and the grub's
first-rate."
"Very well, dad," agreed Susie, instantly seizing the concession, but
speaking as though it were she who was making it, "we'll stay here,
then. Only I do wish there were a few more people," she added, with a
sigh. "I hate to sit down in that big, empty dining-room. I imagine I'm
at an Egyptian banquet, and that there are horrid, rattly skeletons sitting
in all those high, covered chairs."
"What you need is some fresh air," said her father. "You girls get your
hats and go for a walk. You're growing morbid. If you think of
skeletons again, I'll give you a liver pill."
"Won't you come, dad?"
"No; you know you don't want me. Besides, I see the panjandrum who
brings the mail coming up the dyke down yonder."
He stood gazing down the Digue until his womenkind reappeared,
bedight, ready for the walk.
"You'll do," he said, looking them over critically. "In fact, my dears, if I
wasn't afraid of making you conceited, I'd say I'd never seen two
handsomer girls in my life."
"Now it's you who are blarneying, dad!" cried Susie, but she dimpled
with pleasure nevertheless, and so did Nell.

"No I'm not," retorted Rushford; "and I dare say there are plenty of
other men, even in this Dutch limbo, who have an eye for beauty; let
them break their hearts, if they have any, but keep your own hearts
whole, my dears."
They were laughing in earnest, now, as they looked up in his face,
which had grown suddenly serious.
"Why, dad, what ails you?" questioned Sue. "I think it is you who need
the pill!"
Rushford's face cleared; they were heart-whole thus far--there could be
no doubt of that.
"Perhaps I do," he agreed. "Or perhaps it's only that I'm beginning to
feel the responsibilities of my position."
"Your position?"
"As chaperon," he explained.
"Dear dad!" cried Susie, and squeezed his arm. "Do you suppose that as
long as we have you, either of us will ever think of another man?"
"I don't know," said her father, dubiously. "I scarcely believe I'm so
fascinating as all that. But I just wanted to remind you, girls, that there's
plenty of nice boys at home--boys whom you can