There was a silence after that.

"His music didn't sound to me like doughboy music," Mary observed at
last. "Nor his going to Walt Whitman to get the words."

"Was that Walt Whitman? It sounded to me as if he was making it up as he
went along." He had the grace to grin at himself over that admission,
however. "Oh, well," he concluded, "Paula's all right anyhow. I think
she's--wonderful, myself. Only poor old dad! He is a peach, Mary. It's
funny how differently I remember him. He acted like one real sport
to-night."

"Afterward, you mean." Mary, it seemed, would not have characterized her
father's behavior earlier in the evening in just that way. "Tell me all
about it. Only reach me a cigarette first."

He obeyed the latter injunction with an air of protest. "It's the only
thing you do that I wish you didn't," he said.

"Why? Do you think it's bad for me?"

He wouldn't commit himself by answering that. The retort it offered her
was obvious. "It doesn't seem like you," he explained.

"Very well," she said, taking a light from his match, "then I shall go on
just to keep you reminded that I'm not plaster of Paris. I like to have
somebody around who doesn't think that."

"Father doesn't," Rush asserted, and got so eager a look of inquiry from
her that he regretted having nothing very substantial to satisfy it