Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/131

 morning he got up and roused the household, apparently in the jolliest humor, ringing all through the house the big dinner-bell that we use to call the children from the woods. He made Dorothy put on her new knickers, and got the car out, and drove off to town with the children, 'for a lark,' he said. They came back about noon, and drove up to the door, and honked. I went out; and there was Dorothy in her knickers on the front seat with her father, both of them smoking, and Dorothy with her hair—her lovely soft hair—bobbed above her ears, and her neck shaved like a convict's. I could have cried—either with grief or with rage. And Oliver, simply bubbling with joy, called out, 'I've met them halfway, Cornelia darling!' Wasn't he horrid? Wasn't he perfectly horrid? I didn't cry. But Oliver went back to New York by the afternoon train. And now you know why there was no birthday party last night."