"Papa, I can’t make any excuses for myself. It’s not prudery; it’s not that; but somehow the real _me_ didn’t like the real _him_, and that’s all I can say about it!"
"You’ll have to write to him, and break it off."
"But what am I to tell him, Papa? It’s so awful and humiliating for him. I guess I’ll just put it down to insanity in my family."
"But, good Lord, we haven’t any--we’ve a very decent record."
"Oh, Papa, I simply must have been insane to have got engaged to him.--I’ll write him a beautiful letter of regret, and inclose a doctor’s certificate!"
Her incorrigible humor was again asserting itself. She outlined the letter, her eyes dancing with merriment. Mr. Ladd, in no mood to criticize these swift transitions, joined in whole-heartedly. They laughed and laughed till the tears came, and arrived home like noisy children from a party.
Mrs. Fensham, in a very décolleté gown, and looking like a sylph of twenty-five, was waiting for the carriage to take her to a ball. She swam up in front of Bob, and raised her two little hands to his shoulders--a graceful gesture, and one she was very fond of.
"And you found him a perfect dear, didn’t you?" she murmured ecstatically.
"Well, I don’t know that I did," faltered Brother Bob, placing a kiss on the top of her head. "The fact is, Sally, we’ve decided to call it off!"
"Bob, you haven’t broken the engagement!"
Her lisping voice turned suddenly metallic. She stared from her brother to her niece, a sylph no longer, but a woman of forty-five, pale with apprehension and anger.
"Phyllis has made a mistake, that’s all," he said. "He looked very nice in the show-window, but now we are going to take him back, and get a credit-slip for something we want more."
"A new automobile coat for Papa," put in Phyllis mischievously.
"And you can both laugh about it!" exclaimed Aunt Sarah in appalled accents. "Laugh at throwing over J. Whitlock Pastor! Oh, you little Carthage nobodies--haven’t you any sense at all--don’t you know what you are doing--isn’t he as much a duke with us as any Marlborough or Newcastle in England? He was too good; he was too nice; he wasn’t enough of a snob to blow and brag--and that’s what he gets for it, the ’No’ of a silly girl, who’d prefer a barber’s block clerk to the greatest gentleman in America!"