"Hush, Elschen! Papa can say what he wishes, always, to me. Is it not so, Karl?"
Papa Wolf pushed away his plate, wiped his mustache and leaned back in his chair with a smile and a sigh of repletion.
"You spoil us all, Mamma!" he exclaimed. "Elsa, Uncle Hugo comes to-night and we will have a little music. You will give up choir practice, just for once."
Ernest glanced at his sister apprehensively. She flushed resentfully. "But I must go, Papa!" she cried. "I take the salary the church pays me. I must sing well."
"Laughing and flirting with the new bass is not practice," returned Papa. "You stay at home to-night, Elschen."
Elsa glanced at Ernest, who shrugged his shoulders. Then she gave a long look at her father with eyes that were black with anger.
"Papa, I'm going to choir practice," she insisted.
Her father brought his fist down on the table. "Am I or am I not master in my own house?" he shouted. "Elsa, what you have needed was a German upbringing. You will stay at home to-night and make music with Hugo and me."
"Papa," said Elsa slowly, "I am twenty-nine years old and I can't endure this sort of thing much longer. Mother and I are just unpaid servants for--"
"Elsa! Bitte! Bitte sehr!" exclaimed Mother Wolf.
Elsa's dark look went to her mother, then to Roger, who was still scowling. Her lips trembled. She shrugged her shoulders and rising began to clear the table.
The three men went into the library and lighted their pipes. Papa Wolf, having with much difficulty persuaded his meerschaum to draw, parted his coat-tails and settled himself on the piano stool. Then he threw his head back while he touched a few quiet chords. He had a beautiful, massive head. Roger, ensconced in a deep Morris chair, thought, as he had thought many times before, that it was a head that should have belonged to an artist rather than to a dry goods merchant. The chords merged into a quiet melody. Ernest buried his head in the evening paper. Roger let his pipe go out and his face settled into lines that added ten years to his age.
The subdued clatter of dishes from the kitchen finally ceased and Elsa came through the room. Her father stopped her as she passed and put his arm about her waist.
"Sweetheart, don't be cross with me," he said. "It's just that Papa so loves to have his little girl with him."