Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/355

 "Excellent stuff, Dubonnet," he said appreciatively.

"I'm glad you like it," said Marise. She envied her father his enjoyments. They were, comparatively speaking, so easy to get.

Looking at her seemed to remind him of something. He reached into a vest pocket (with some difficulty, for his vests were more and more tightly packed with each year of good living), and took out a little jeweller's box.

"It's your birthday to-day," he remarked, taking another careful sip of his apéritif.

Marise looked at the present, a little wrist-watch, from a very good house.

"Oh, that's awfully good of you. Father," she said, trying it on.

"You can have one if that funny little friend of yours can," he advanced.

"Oh, if you start giving me everything Eugenia has.…!" protested Marise.

"Somebody ought to make her a present of a little ordinary sense," he commented, with no great interest in the subject. "I've seen her kind before. They tear things loose till they get what they want, and then they don't like it."

"Eugenia just loves it, every bit of it," Marise objected.

"Well, let her," he dismissed her from consideration with his usual nonchalance, and taking the last of the Dubonnet, he rose to go into his room.

In a moment Marise heard an indignant roar, "Mélanie has forgotten my hot water again!" Her father came to the door of his room, vast and bulging in his shirt and trousers, outraged by the oversight.

"Oh, yes," said Marise, in annoyance. "You might have known she would. Biron has been in another tantrum and taking her head off. It gets her so rattled she forgets her own work."

"I don't see what that has to do with my hot water," cried the master of the house aggrieved.

"It hasn't! It hasn't!" cried Marise hastily, running to tell Mélanie of her crime.