osalee has ever
had a chance to observe," said my mother. "If you had ever been willing
to let boys come to the house--maybe she wouldn't have considered this
one such a--such a thrilling curiosity."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said my father. "She's only a child! There'll be
no boys come to this house for years and years!"

"She's seventeen," said my mother. "You and I were married when I was
seventeen."

"That's different!" said my father. He tried to smile. He couldn't.
Mother smiled quite a good deal. He jumped up and began to pace the
room. He demanded things. "Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that you
want your daughter to marry this strange young man?"

"Not at all," said mother.

Father turned at the edge of the rug and looked back. His face was all
frowned. "And I don't like him anyway," he said. "He's too dark!"

"His father roomed with you at college, you say?" asked my mother very
softly. "Do you remember him--specially?"

"Do I remember him?" cried my father. He looked astonished. "Do I
remember him? Why, he was the best friend I ever had in the world! Do I
remember him?"

"And he was--very fair?" asked my mother.

"Fair?" cried my father. "He was as dark as a Spaniard!"

"And yet--reasonably--respectable?" asked my mother.

"Respectable?" cried my father. "Why, he was the highest-minded man I
ever knew in my life!"

"And so--dark?" said my mother. She began to laugh. It was what we call
her cut-finger laugh, her bandage laugh. It rolled all around father's
angriness and made it feel better almost at once.

"Well, I can't help it," said father. He shook his head just the way
Carol does sometimes when he's planning to be pleasant as soon as it's
convenient. "Well, I can't help it! Exceptions, of course, are
exceptions! But Cuba? A climate all mushy with warmth and sunshine! What
possible stamina can a young man have who's grown up on sugar-cane sirup
and--and bananas?"

"He seemed to have teeth," said my mother. "He ate two helpings of
turkey!"

"He had a gold cigaret-case!" said my father. "_Gold!_"

My mother began to laugh all over again.

"Maybe his Sunday-school class gave it to him," she said. It seemed to
be a joke. Once father's Sunday-school class gave him a high silk hat.
Father laughed a little.

Mother looked very beautiful. She ruffled her hair a little on father's
shoulder. She pinked her cheeks from the inside some way. She glanced up
at the topmost branch of the Christmas