Mrs. Emery interrupted him with the ruthless and justifiable impatience of people at the family history of their relations by marriage. "Oh, go along! And stop and speak to Paul on your way out. Just drop in as you pass the door. We don't want to really chaperone her. Nobody does that yet--but--the Hollisters are so formal about their girls--well, you stop in, anyhow. It's borne in on me that that'll look better, after all."
In the midst of his conference with Dr. Melton, an hour later, it came upon Judge Emery with a clap that he had forgotten this behest of his wife's, plunged deep in legal speculations as he had been, the instant he turned from her door. He brought his hand down on the table.
"What's the matter?" asked the little doctor, peering up at him.
"Oh, nothing important--women's cobwebs. I'm afraid I'll have to go, though. We can take this up again to-morrow, can't we?"
"At your service," said the doctor; but he pulled with some exasperation at a big pile of pamphlets still to be examined.
"It's something about Lydia's receiving a call from Paul Hollister, and her mother wanting me to stop in as I left the house and say good-evening--sort of represent the family--do the proper thing. Don't it tickle you to see women who used to sleigh-ride from seven to eleven every evening in a little cutter just big enough for one and a half, begin to wonder if they hadn't better chaperone their girls when they have callers in the next room?"
He stirred up the pamphlets with a discontented look. "Confound it, I wish I could stay! Which one of those has the statistics about the accidents when the men aren't allowed one day in seven?"
"See here, Emery!" In spite of his evident wish to exhort, the doctor continued sitting as he spoke. He was so short that to rise could have given him no perceptible advantage over the tall lawyer. "See here; do you know that you have a most unusual girl for a daughter?"
"I have heard people say that I have a glimmering notion of her merits," said the other with a humorous gravity.
"Oh, I don't mean pretty, and appealing, and with a good complexion, and all that--and I don't mean you don't spoil her most outrageously. I mean she's got the oddest make-up for a modern American girl--she's simple."