Lydia to be outdoors too
much. It seems to go to her head so. She gets to looking like
Harry--almost reckless, and like some little scampering wild animal."

Judge Emery rose and buttoned his coat about his spare figure. "Maybe
she takes a back track, after some of my folks. You know there's one
line in my mother's family that was always crazy about the woods. My
grandfather on my mother's side used to go off just as regular as the
month of May came around, and--"

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."

CHAPTER IX

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

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?"