th us."

"Oh!" breathed Eveley. "Won't that be lovely?"

Mrs. Severs burst into passionate weeping. "It won't be lovely," she
sobbed. "It will be ghastly." She sat up abruptly and wiped her eyes. "He
is the most heart-breaking thing you ever saw, and he doesn't like me. He
doesn't approve of dimples, and he says I am soft. And he has the most
desperate old chum you ever saw, a perfect wreck with red whiskers, and
they get together every night and play pinochle and smoke smelly old
pipes, and he won't have curtains in his bedroom, and he is crazy about a
phonograph, and he won't eat my cooking."

"I should think you would like that," said Eveley. "Maybe he will cook
for himself."

"That is just it," wailed Mrs. Severs. "He does. He cooks the smelliest
kind of corn beef and cabbage, and eats liver by the--by the cow, and has
raw onions with every meal. And he drinks tea by the gallon. And he cooks
everything himself and piles it on his plate like a mountain and carries
it to the table and sits there and eats it right before company and
everybody."

"I don't see how Mr. Severs ever came to have a father like that," said
Eveley in open surprise.

"Well, the funny thing about it is that he would really be very nice if
he wasn't so outrageous. And he swears terribly. He says 'Holy Mackinaw'
at everything. But he loves Dody. They lived together for years, and it
nearly killed him when Dody got married. And Dody said, 'You will live
with us of course, father,' and so we expected it. But he went off for a
visit after we were married--he and the red-whiskered friend, and we sort
of thought--we kind of hoped--miracles do happen, you know--and so I just
kept believing that something would turn up to save us. But it didn't.
Dody got a letter this morning, and he will be here this afternoon. Oh, I
wish I were dead."

"Is he terribly poor?"

"Mercy, no! He's got plenty of money. Lots more than we have. Enough to
live anywhere he pleases."

"I see it all," said Eveley ominously. "You won't be happy with him, and
he won't be happy with you, but you are all putting up with it because it
is your--duty."

"Yes, that is it, of course."

Eveley poured herself another cup of coffee and drank it rapidly, without
cream, and only one lump of sugar. "I am upset," she said at last. "This
has simply shattered the day for me. Excuse me, you'll have to hurry, I
only have five minutes left. I haven't explained my belief and principles
t