medieval," Forbes agreed."Oh, but you are quaint, Alice," Persis laughed. "I thought it only happened in books and plays, but here's Alice actually obeying a cruel order like that. I'd like to see my father try to boss me. I'd really enjoy it as a change."
Alice broke in: "Oh, fathers--they're different! My poor Daddelums was the sweetest thing on earth. I wrapped him round my little finger. But mother--umm, she gets her own way, I can tell you--at least she thinks she does. I wouldn't let any earthly power tear me away from my darling Stowe, but I don't dare face her down."
"I thought she always liked Mr. Webb?" Persis said.
"Oh, she did till his father's will was probated. His insurance was immense, but his debts were immenser. So poor Stowe is dumped
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upon the world with hardly a cent. Of course, I love him all the more; but mother has turned against him. I wouldn't mind starving
with Stowe, but mother is so materialistic! She wants to marry me off to that dreadful old Senator Tait."
"Dreadful?" snorted Winifred, who had listened in silence. "Old? Senator Tait is neither dreadful nor old. He is a cavalier, and in the prime of his powers."
"You can have him!" snapped Alice, with a flare of temper that she regretted instantly, and the more sincerely since she knew that Winifred had long been angling vainly and desperately for the Senator. There was a bitterer sarcasm in her retort than she meant, but Winifred[Pg 79] knew what Alice was thinking, and canceled it by meeting it frankly:
"I wish I could have him. God knows I'd prefer him to any of these half-baked whippersnappers that--"
"Winifred!" Persis murmured, subduingly; and Miss Mather subsided like a retreating thunder-storm. "The Senator is one of the--"
"I know he is, my dear," Alice broke in, in her most soothing tone. "He's far, far too splendid a man for a fool like me. But can't I
admit how splendid he would be in the Senate Chamber without wanting him in my boudoir?"
"Alice!" gasped Persis. "Remember that there are young men present."
Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but do you really mean that Senator Tait is--is proposing for your hand?"
"So my awful mother says."
"It doesn't sound like the Senator Tait I used to know."
"You knew him well?" Persis asked, with a quick eagerness that did not quite conceal a note of surprise.
Forbes caught it, and answered somewhat icily: "I had that privilege. He and my father used to ride to the hounds together. In fact, they were together when my father's horse threw him and fell on him, and crushed him to death. Senator Tait brought the body home to my poor mother. He was very dear to us all."
Persis looked what sympathy she could for such remote suffering. And Forbes was something less of a stranger. Also he had moved one step closer to her degree.
He had appeared first under the auspices of Murray Ten Eyck, who guaranteed him as an officer in the army. He had demonstrated his own dignity and magnetism. And now his family was sponsored by an old-time friendship with Senator Tait, a very Warwick of American royalty.[Pg 80]
CHAPTER XIV
PERSIS was not of the period or the set that thinks much of family. In fact, the whole world and its aristocracies have been shaken by too many earthquakes of late to leave walls standing high enough to keep youth from overlooking and overstepping them. Few speak of caste nowadays except novelists, editors, and the very old. What aristocracies we have are clubs or cliques gathered by a community of tastes, and recruited individually.
In any case, the Persis that was willing to go out into the byways and highways and public dancing-places would have made no bones of granting her smiles and her hospitality to anybody that entertained her, mountebank or mummer, tradesman or riding-master.
And yet it did Forbes no harm in her eyes to be established as of high lineage and important acquaintance. If only now he were rich, he would be graduated quite into the inner circle of those who were eligible to serious consideration.
Unconsciously Ten Eyck gave him this diploma also, though his motive was rather one of rebuke to Persis for her little tang of surprise.
"You needn't raise your brows, Persis, because Forbesy knows senators and things," he said. "He's a plutocrat, too. I caught him
depositing a million dollars in one of our best little banks to-day."
"A million dollars!" Forbes gasped. "Is there that much money in the world?"
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Forbes had no desire to obtain the reputation of money[Pg 81] under false pretenses. Yet he could not delicately discuss his exact poverty. He could not decently announce: "I have only my small army pay and a few hundred dollars in the bank." It would imply that these people were interested in his financial status. Yet even the pretense by silence troubled him, till his problem was dismissed by an interruption:
"Is anybody at home?"
Mrs. Neff spoke into the stillness as if she had materialized from nothing. Nobody had noticed her approach, and every one was startled. To Forbes her sharp voice came as a rescue from incantation. And Mrs. Neff was in the mood of the most unromantic reality. She did not pause to be greeted or questioned, but went at her discourse with a flying start:
"I'm mad and I'm hungry as the devil--oh, pardon me! I didn't see my angel child. Alice, darling, how on earth did you get here? Murray, if you have a human heart in your buzzum get the waiter man to run for a sandwich and a--a--no, I'll be darned if I'll take tea, in spite of example to youngers, who never follow our good examples, anyway; make it a highball, Murray; Scotch, and quick!"
The waiter nodded in response to Ten Eyck's nod, and vanished with an excellent imitation of great speed.
"Give over, Win!" Mrs. Neff continued, prodding Miss Mather aside and wedging forward with the chair Ten Eyck surrendered to her. "What's in those sandwiches? Lettuce? Thanks! Don't all ask me at once where I've been! I'm the little lady what seen her dooty and done it. If my angel child had done hers she would be even now listening to a lecture on Current Topics, so that she could in-form her awful mother, as she calls me, what the tariff talk is all about, and who Salonica is, and why the Vulgarians are fighting the Balkans. But, of course, being a modern child, she plays hookey and goes to thes dansants while her poor old mother works."[Pg 82]
"But mother dear, I was just--"
"Don't tell it, my child! I know what you're going to say: that Persis picked you up and dragged you here by the hair, and Persis will back you up, of course, like the dear little liar she is. But I'll save you the trouble, darlings. Where is he? Is he still here or did he learn of my approach and flit?"
"He--who?" said every one, zealously, with a stare of innocence sadly overdone.
"He--who?" Mrs. Neff mocked. "He-haw! Oh, but you're a putrid lot of actors. So he has been here. Well, I mention no names, but if a certain young person whose initials are Stowe Webb wants to meet a little old lady named Trouble, let him come out from under the table."
"Mother dear, how you do run on," Alice protested. "I don't think you really need another highball."
