Chapter V

Athalie entered with nonchalance and no sign of the recent tears. Her face had perhaps been washed and a portion of her complexion removed, but she still had a vivid look and her hair was more startling than ever, now that her rakish hat was removed. It stood out in a fluffy puff-ball like a dandelion gone to seed, and gave her an amazing appearance. Her father stared at her with a fascinated horror and was speechless.

She had changed her travelling frock for an accordion-pleated affair of soft jade-green silk with an expansive neck-line and sleeves that were slit several times from wrist to shoulder and swung jauntily in festoon-like serpentine curves around and among her plump pink arms. She had compromised on a pair of black chiffon-silk stockings with openwork clocking and black satin sandals with glittering little rhinestone clasps. A platinum wrist-watch and a glitter of jewels attended every movement of her plump pink hands with their pointed sea-shell finger-tips, and a long string of carved ivory beads swung downward from her neck and mingled with the clutter of a clattering, noisy little girdle. No wonder he stared. And she had done all that amazing toilet while he was talking with the minister.

He stared, and her dimples began to come with reminder of her mother in the old luring way, filling him with pain and anger and a worse than helplessness. Her mother’s face was not so fat as hers, but the dimples went and came with such familiar play!

“Dad, you needn’t think you can keep me shut up away from things,” she said archly. “I’m going to know all your men friends and be real chummy with them. The men always like me. I’m like Lilla in that! They bring me stacks of presents and slews of chocolates. I’ve got a lot of going-away boxes in my trunks. Some of them are jimdandies. This watch is a present from Bobs. You know who Bobs is, don’t you? Bobs Farrell. He was dead gone on Lilla. He gave me this watch on my last birthday. It’s platinum and diamonds. Isn’t it great? He brought me out in his car this morning or I would have had to wait two hours. When I found out what time this little old train started, I just called up his apartment and he came right down and got me and took me up to his place for breakfast. He has the darlingest apartments all by himself with a Japanese man to wait on him, and the most adorable cooking! And he’s going to have a theatre party for me some night with a dinner afterward at his apartment. Won’t that be simply great? I’m to ask any two girls from school I like, and he will get the men. And by the way, Daddy, I’ve invited a house party for the first week in June. You don’t mind, do you? There are ten of the girls in my class and I’ve promised them the time of their life. The fellows won’t be here only at the week-end. They have to be back at prep. Monday morning. Their old school doesn’t close for two weeks after ours.”

His most amazing child had rattled on without let-up thus far, and this was the first period he had been able to grasp. He hastened to avail himself of it, meanwhile glancing nervously at the clock.

“School! Yes. School! May I ask why you are not in school yourself?”

“Oh!” she wreathed the dimples coquettishly around her red lips, “why! didn’t you know I had been fired!” She dimpled charmingly as though it were something to be proud about. “I suppose Lilla didn’t tell you because she was afraid you’d be shocked, but you might as well know all about it at the start. It saves misunderstandings. You see, we had a pajama party!”

“A pajama party!” cried the horrified father.

“O, now, daddy Pat! You needn’t pull a long face and make out you never did such things. You know you had gay times when you went to school, and you can’t be young but once. There isn’t anything so terrible in a pajama party! You see the whole trouble was I got caught out on the fire-escape in mine and all the rest got away, so I had to be fired, but it was fun. I don’t care. I’d be fired over again just to see how Guzzy Foster, that’s the math. prof., looked when that ice and salt went down his back. You see it was this way. One of the girls had a dandy box from home, and she happened to tell one of the boys from the military prep. that she had it, and he coaxed to get some of the things. So May Beth told him if he and some of his friends would come under the fire-escape at exactly midnight she’d drop down a box of cake for them. Well, everything went all right till the party was almost over and the girls had eaten all they could stuff, and they had the box for the boys all packed and I was to go out and throw it down to them because May Beth had an awful cold and her pajamas were just thin crêpe de Chine and she was all of a shiver anyway from eating so much cold ice cream. So I said I didn’t mind even if it was cold. I thought it would be fun, and I went out with the box and whistled softly for the boys, and they answered once, and then, it was all very still. It was moonlight and I could see them lined up among the bushes on the campus. I swung the box over the railing and whispered, ‘Here she comes,’ and just as I did it I somehow caught my toe in the burlap that came off the ice-cream freezer—I had on Tillie Irvin’s pink satin mules with forget-me-nots on them, and she was sore as a boil at me about that too—and then before I knew what was happening, I somehow hit the ice-cream freezer and knocked it over, and _slosh!_ out went all the sloppy ice and salt water through the iron grating of the fire-escape, and I looked down and there was Guzzy Foster—he and his wife have their apartment right under my room, and we thought they were away for the week-end, that’s why we chose my room for the party—he was just inside his window with his head stuck out of an old red bath robe looking up—the old ferret. He was always snooping round to stop any fun that was going—and he caught the whole stream of icy salt water full in his face and down his old mathematical back, and I hope he gets pneumonia from it. He’s the limit! Well, I heard him gasp and splutter, and draw in his head, and I heard the boys snicker down in the bushes and scatter out to the street—they got the cake all right. I called one of ’em up on the phone at the station before I left and found out—and I just danced up and down in those pink satin mules with the forget-me-nots and howled for a minute, it was so funny. And then all of a sudden I realized it had got very still behind me and I looked in the window and the lights were out. There wasn’t a sound of a girl to be heard, and down the hall I could hear hard steps that sounded like Mrs. Foster, so I tried to get in the window, but it was fastened! Babe Heath did that because she thought if the window was locked they wouldn’t think to look out. But there was I in thin china-silk pajamas and the wind blowing up from the river like ice! It was grand skating the next day, so you may know it was pretty fierce! But I stuck it out till she found me, and they fired me so quick Lilla didn’t have a chance to come and see what was the matter. They just sent me home that night in charge of Guzzy Foster himself. His name’s Augustus Charles, but we call him Guzzy and I had a horrid, horrid time, so it’s up to you to be good to me!”

Patterson Greeves gasped, and grasped the arms of the big chair into which he had dropped as Athalie entered, looking at his child in abject helplessness.

The distant sound of an approaching train stirred him to nervous action once more.

“I certainly cannot approve of your outrageous conduct,” he began, in a tone such as he might have used in his classroom. “It was inexcusable, impossible, indecent—! I cannot think how a girl could bring herself to so demean herself. And the first thing you must do will be to write a humble acknowledgment and apology to the principal of the institution and promise that for the future your conduct shall be irreproachable. I will see at once about your reinstatement, and I cannot countenance in future any disregard of the rules of the school or of the rules of good breeding.”

But the girl broke in with a boisterous laugh:

“What’s that you say? Me go back to that school? Well, I guess anyhow not. _Not on your life, I don’t!_ You couldn’t _drag_ me within sight of the old dump. I’m done with it forever, and I’ll tell the world _I’m glad_! Why? Don’t you like me? Doesn’t this dress suit you any better? I’ve got some stunners in my trunks. When do you think they will bring them out from the city? Can’t we get a car and go after them? I’m just dying to show you some of my things, and the big portrait of Lilla she had taken for the General—!”

Greeves arose, white and angry.

“Get on your things at once!” he almost shouted. “We are going back to your school. It is impossible for you to stay here. I am a very busy man. I have important work to do.” He glanced wildly at his watch, and then gave a quick look out of the window as he strode to the bell and touched it, flinging open the hall door and looking up the stairs.

“But I am not going back to school!” declared Athalie with a black look. “I’m going to stay right here! I won’t be the least trouble in the world. I’ll have my friends, and you can have yours. I’ll go my way, and you can go yours. That’s the way Lilla and I always did. Only, Daddy Pat, have we got to have that old limb of a housekeeper around? I hate her! I couldn’t get on with her a day. I’m sure I’d shock her. She’s a pie-faced hypocrite and you’d better fire her. I’ll run the house. I know how! Daddy Pat—may I call you _Pat_?”

“_No!_” thundered the scientist. “You may not. You may say ‘Father’ if it’s necessary to call me anything!” He glared at her. “And you may go to your room at once and stay there until I send for you!” he added suddenly, as he glanced once more out of the window and saw an automobile draw up before the door. Then both of them became aware that Anne Truesdale stood in the open door, her face as white as her starched apron, a look of consternation upon her meek face and her hands clasped nervously at her belt.