An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [88]
“Oh, Daddy,” she called most sweetly and enticingly as she saw him enter. “Is that you?”
“Yes. At least it feels a little like me at the present moment. How’s my baby girl?” And he opened his arms and received the bounding form of his last born. “There’s a good, strong, healthy girl, I’ll say,” he announced as he withdrew his affectionate lips from hers. “And how’s the bad girl been behaving herself since I left? No fibbing this time.”
“Oh, just fine, Daddy. You can ask any one. I couldn’t be better.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s all right, Daddy. She’s up in her room. I don’t think she heard you come in.”
“And Myra? Is she back from Albany yet?”
“Yes. She’s in her room. I heard her playing just now. I just got in myself a little while ago.”
“Ay, hai. Gadding about again. I know you.” He held up a genial forefinger, warningly, while Bella swung onto one of his arms and kept pace with him up the stairs to the floor above.
“Oh, no, I wasn’t either, now,” she cooed shrewdly and sweetly. “Just see how you pick on me, Daddy. I was only over with Sondra for a little while. And what do you think, Daddy? They’re going to give up the place at Greenwood and build a big handsome bungalow up on Twelfth Lake right away. And Mr. Finchley’s going to buy a big electric launch for Stuart and they’re going to live up there next summer, maybe all the time, from May until October. And so are the Cranstons, maybe.”
Mr. Griffiths, long used to his younger daughter’s wiles, was interested at the moment not so much by the thought that she wished to convey—that Twelfth Lake was more desirable, socially than Greenwood—as he was by the fact that the Finchleys were able to make this sudden and rather heavy expenditure for social reasons only.
Instead of answering Bella he went on upstairs and into his wife’s room. He kissed Mrs. Griffiths, looked in upon Myra, who came to the door to embrace him, and spoke of the successful nature of the trip. One could see by the way he embraced his wife that there was an agreeable understanding between them—no disharmony—by the way he greeted Myra that if he did not exactly sympathize with her temperament and point of view, at least he included her within the largess of his affection.
As they were talking Mrs. Truesdale announced that dinner was ready, and Gilbert, having completed his toilet, now entered.
“I say, Dad,” he called, “I have an interesting thing I want to see you about in the morning. Can I?”
“All right, I’ll be there. Come in about noon.”
“Come on all, or the dinner will be getting cold,” admonished Mrs. Griffiths earnestly, and forthwith Gilbert turned and went down, followed by Griffiths, who still had Bella on his arm. And after him came Mrs. Griffiths and Myra, who now emerged from her room and joined them.
Once seated at the table, the family forthwith began discussing topics of current local interest. For Bella, who was the family’s chief source of gossip, gathering the most of it from the Snedeker School, through which all the social news appeared to percolate most swiftly, suddenly announced: “What do you think, Mamma? Rosetta Nicholson, that niece of Mrs. Disston Nicholson, who was over here last summer from Albany—you know, she came over the night of the Alumnae Garden Party on our lawn—you remember—the young girl with the yellow hair and squinty blue eyes—her father owns that big wholesale grocery over there—well, she’s engaged to that Herbert Tickham of Utica, who was visiting Mrs. Lambert last summer. You don’t remember him, but I do. He was tall and dark and sorta awkward, and awfully pale, but very handsome—oh, a regular movie hero.”
“There you go, Mrs. Griffiths,” interjected Gilbert shrewdly and cynically to his mother. “A delegation from