Affair in Araby | Page 3

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 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