"
"What a shame!"
"Wallowing in my best chair," said Mr. Pett morosely. "Smoking
cigarettes."
"Smoking? I thought he had promised aunt Nesta he wouldn't smoke."
"Well, he said he wasn't, of course, but I know he had been. I
don't know what to do with that boy. It's no good my talking to
him. He--he patronises me!" concluded Mr. Pett indignantly.
"Sits there on his shoulder blades with his feet on the table
and talks to me with his mouth full of candy as if I were his
grandson."
"Little brute."
Ann was sorry for Mr. Pett. For many years now, ever since the
death of her mother, they had been inseparable. Her father, who
was a traveller, explorer, big-game hunter, and general sojourner
in the lonelier and wilder spots of the world and paid only
infrequent visits to New York, had left her almost entirely in
Mr. Pett's care, and all her pleasantest memories were associated
with him. Mr. Chester's was in many ways an admirable character,
but not a domestic one; and his relations with his daughter were
confined for the most part to letters and presents. In the past
few years she had come almost to regard Mr. Pett in the light of
a father. Hers was a nature swiftly responsive to kindness; and
because Mr. Pett besides being kind was also pathetic she pitied
as well as loved him. There was a lingering boyishness in the
financier, the boyishness of the boy who muddles along in an
unsympathetic world and can never do anything right: and this
quality called aloud to the youth in her.
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