Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/357

 at his throat, and smiled at his wife, over his glass of excellent Burgundy.

"Life is good, hein, old lady?" he said.

She nodded in agreement, keeping her thoughts to herself in the usual stealthy, secretive, feminine fashion.

Over the coffee and Chartreuse, facing another well-satisfied man sat another secretive woman, talking in one key, feeling in another, and finding the process far from enlivening. Down below the surface of the sparkling, chatting Marise, drooped a listless, dispirited Marise for whom a birthday was a most depressing occasion.

"You're nineteen, aren't you, Marise?" asked her father over his cigar.

Marise nodded.

"Well, that's another one gone! Congratulations on every one you get over with," he commented, sipping the stinging green fire of his liqueur with satisfaction.

Marise thought of nothing amusing to say and was silent.

Her father stirred his big body, with the air of some one arousing himself to an effort. The effort seemed to be to say, "Is there anything you want I can get for you?"

His daughter was at a loss before the comprehensiveness of this blanket question. "What kind of a thing?" she inquired.

He professed himself more at a loss than she. "If I had any idea what, I wouldn't need to ask you, would I?"

But he managed, all the same, at least to eliminate some of the things he didn't mean, "Oh, not dresses or hats," and in a moment, after another sip at the liqueur, to give a little more definite idea of what he did, "Something going on, social life; what girls of nineteen are supposed to want."

"Oh, you needn't bother. I get enough of that," she answered, "between Mrs. Marbury and Eugenia and Madame Vallery." She was surprised at her father's interest. They seldom talked together, except of what they were to eat, had eaten, or were eating, or of the interminable games of chess which occupied any leisure moments of his and hers which chanced to coincide. He seemed to have something on his