THE THIN EDGE
Across the fresh and dainty breakfast table, Dr. Miles Elliot surveyed his even more fresh and dainty niece and ward with an expression of sternest disapproval. Not that it affected in any perceptible degree that attractive young person"s healthy appet.i.te. It was the habit of the two to breakfast together early, while their elderly widowed cousin, who played the part of Feminine Propriety in the household in a highly self-effacing and satisfactory manner, took her tea and toast in her own rooms. It was further Dr. Elliot"s custom to begin the day by reprehending everything (so far as he could find it out) which Miss Esme had done, said, or thought in the previous twenty-four hours. This, as he frequently observed to her, was designed to give her a suitably humble att.i.tude toward the scheme of creation, but didn"t.
"Out all night again?" he growled.
"Pretty nearly," said Esme cheerfully, setting a very even row of very white teeth into an apple.
"Humph! What was it this time?"
"A dinner-dance at the Norris"s."
"Have a good time?"
"Beautiful! My frock was pretty. And I was pretty. And everybody was nice to me. And I wish it were going to happen right over again to-night."
"Whom did you dance with mostly?"
"Anybody that asked me."
"Dare say. How many new victims?" he demanded.
"Don"t be a silly Guardy. I"m not a man-eating tiger or tigress, or the Great American Puma--or pumess. Don"t you think "pumess" is a nice lady-word, Guardy?"
"Did you dance with Will Douglas?" catechised the grizzled doctor, declining to be shunted off on a philological discussion. Next to acting as legal major domo to E.M. Pierce, Douglas"s most important function in life was apparently to fetch and carry for the reigning belle of Worthington. His devotion to Esme Elliot had become stock gossip of the town, since three seasons previous.
"Almost half as often as he asked me," said the girl. "That was eight times, I think."
"Nice boy, Will."
"Boy!" There was a world of expressiveness in the monosyllable.
"Not a day over forty," observed the uncle. "And you are twenty-two. Not that you look it"--judicially--"like thirty-five, after all this dissipation."
Esme rose from her seat, walked with great dignity past her guardian, and suddenly whirling, pounced upon his ear.
"Do I? Do I?" she cried. "Do I look thirty-five? Quick! Take it back."
"Ouch! Oh! No. Not more"n thirty. Oo! All right; twenty-five, then.
Fifteen! Three!!!"
She kissed the a.s.saulted ear, and pirouetted over to the broad window-seat, looking in her simple morning gown like a school-girl.
"Wonder how you do it," grumbled Dr. Elliot. "Up all night roistering like a soph.o.m.ore--"
"I was in bed at three."
"Down next morning, fresh as a--a--"
"Rose," she supplied tritely.
"--cake o" soap," concluded her uncle. "Now, as for you and Will Douglas, as between Will"s forty--"
"Marked down from forty-five," she interjected.
"And your twenty-two--"
"Looking like thirty-something."
"Never mind," said Dr. Elliot in martyred tones. "_I_ don"t want to finish _any_ sentence. Why should I? Got a niece to do it for me."
"n.o.body wants you to finish that one. You"re a matchmaking old maid,"
declared Esme, wrinkling her delicate nose at him, "and if you"re ever put up for our sewing-circle I shall blackball you. Gossip!"
"Oh, if I wanted to gossip, I"d begin to hint about the name of Surtaine."
The girl"s color did not change. "As other people have evidently been doing to you."
"A little. Did you dance with him last night?"
"He wasn"t there. He"s working very hard on his newspaper."
"You seem to know a good deal about it."
"Naturally, since I"ve bought into the paper myself. I believe that"s the proper business phrase, isn"t it?"
"Bought in? What do you mean? You haven"t been making investments without my advice?"
"Don"t worry, Guardy, dear. It isn"t strictly a business transaction.
I"ve been--ahem--establishing a sphere of influence."
"Over Harrington Surtaine?"
"Over his newspaper."
"Look here, Esme! How serious is this Surtaine matter?" Dr. Elliot"s tone had a distinct suggestion of concern.
"For me? Not serious at all."
"But for him?"
"How can I tell? Isn"t it likely to be serious for any of the unprotected young of your species when a Great American Pumess gets after him?" she queried demurely.
"But you can"t know him very well. He"s been here only a few weeks, hasn"t he?"
"More than a month. And from the first he"s gone everywhere."
"That"s quite unusual for your set, isn"t it? I thought you rather prided yourselves on being careful about outsiders."