True to instinct, even in despair, she waited until the girls had
gathered for recreation hour before bedtime. Then she rose up, and as it
were, laid her head upon the block.

"Mrs. Benjamin, I have to be punished," she said.

"Hast thou, Isabelle?"

"I want the girls to pronounce my sentence."

Mr. Benjamin smiled at his wife.

"I hope thy friends will temper justice with mercy, Isabelle," he
remarked with the wrinkly smile threatening. "What is thy crime?"

"It's about my father," began the culprit.

"Yes, what about thy father?"

The girls eyed her hostilely, where she stood, by the fireplace,
dominating the scene.

"I've always loved beautiful people so . . ." she began intensely.

"That is no sin," encouraged Mrs. Benjamin.

"I admire big, handsome men . . ."

One of the girls sniffed. This sound let loose the flow of Isabelle's
histrionic remorse.

"Oh, you must listen to me," she cried, "you cannot condemn me until I
have told it all."

"That is fair," said the calm voice of Mrs. Benjamin.

"It was always a disappointment to me that my father was so little and
queer."

"But, Isabelle," interrupted Mrs. Benjamin, quickly.

"Please, I have to say what I think or it isn't a true story. Wally is
much the nicest person in our family, but somehow he never seemed to
count with anybody."

This daring focussed their attention. Mrs. Benjamin shook her head at
her husband, who was about to interrupt this performance.

"I wanted a big kind of father, who blustered at you and made you feel
respectful. I wanted him to have adventures, like Don Quixote, and make
you thrilly all up and down your spine!"

"Didst thou want him to wear a sword and scabbard?" interrupted Mr.
Benjamin, who disapproved of these heroics. But Isabelle was warmed to
her subject now, and she did not hear him.

"Imagine what it meant to me to want that kind of a father, and to get
Wally! You all know how I felt. It was just what you felt last night
when you saw him first," she accused them. "When I was a lonely little
girl I used to make up stories about the kind of parent I wanted. The
made-up one got all mixed up with the real one. So when Peggy asked me
if my father was handsome, I didn't stop to think which one she meant, I
just said yes because the make-believe one was awf'ly good looking."

"But you only have one father, Isabelle," Peggy defended herself.

"I know I really have only one, but don't you see, I didn't _mea