Part 8 (1/2)
Jane looked up from her plate.
”I hope you sent that shameless Brent girl away, too,” she announced, with the calm att.i.tude of one whose own virtue is above reproach.
Donald glared at her.
”Of course I did not!” he retorted. ”How thoroughly unkind and uncharitable of you, Jane, to hope I would be guilty of such a cruel and unmanly action!”
The Laird waved his carving-knife.
”Hear, hear!” he chuckled. ”Spoken like a man, my son. Jane, my dear, if I were you, I wouldn't press this matter further. It's a delicate subject.”
”I'm sure I do not see why Jane should not be free to express her opinion, Hector.” Mrs. McKaye felt impelled to fly to the defense of her daughter. ”You know as well as we do, Hector, that the Brent girl is quite outside the pale of respectable society.”
”We shall never agree on what const.i.tutes 'respectable society,'
Nellie,” The Laird answered whimsically. ”There are a few in that Seattle set of yours I find it hard to include in that category.”
”Oh, they're quite respectable, father,” Donald protested.
”Indeed they are, Donald! Hector, you amaze me,” Mrs. McKaye chided.
”They have too much money to be anything else,” Donald added, and winked at his father.
”Tush, tush, lad!” the old man murmured. ”We shall get nowhere with such arguments. The world has been at that line of conversation for two thousand years, and the issue's still in doubt. Nellie, will you have a piece of the well-done?”
”You and your father are never done joining forces against me,” Mrs.
McKaye protested, and in her voice was the well-known note that presaged tears should she be opposed further. The Laird, all too familiar with this truly feminine type of tyranny, indicated to his son, by a lightning wink, that he desired the conversation diverted into other channels, whereupon Donald favored his mother with a disarming smile.
”I'm going to make a real start to-morrow morning, mother,” he announced brightly. ”I'm going up in the woods and be a lumberjack for a month. Going to grow warts on my hands and chew tobacco and develop into a brawny roughneck.”
”Is that quite necessary?” Elizabeth queried, with a slight elevation of her eyebrows. ”I understood you were going to manage the business.”
”I am--after I've learned it thoroughly, Lizzie.”
”Don't call me 'Lizzie,'” she warned him irritably.
”Very well, Elizabeth.”
”In simple justice to those people from Darrow that you evicted from the Sawdust Pile, Don, you should finish your work before you go. If they were not fit to inhabit the Sawdust Pile, then neither is Nan Brent. You've got to play fair.” Jane had returned to the attack.
”Look here, Jane,” her brother answered seriously: ”I wish you'd forget Nan Brent. She's an old and very dear friend of mine, and I do not like to hear my friends slandered.”
”Oh, indeed!” Jane considered this humorous, and indulged herself in a cynical laugh.
”Friend of his?” Elizabeth, who was regarded in her set as a wit, a reputation acquired by reason of the fact that she possessed a certain knack for adapting slang humorously (for there was no originality to her alleged wit), now bent her head and looked at her brother incredulously. ”My word! That's a rich dish.”
”Why, Donald dear,” his mother cried reproachfully, ”surely you are jesting!”
”Not at all. Nan Brent isn't a bad girl, even if she is the mother of a child born out of wedlock. She stays at home and minds her own business, and lets others mind theirs.”
”Donald's going to be tragic. See if he isn't,” Elizabeth declared.
”Come now, old dear; if Nan Brent isn't a bad woman, just what is your idea of what const.i.tutes badness in a woman? It would be interesting to know your point of view.”