First Printing, Feb., 1919
Second Printing, Feb., 1919
Third Printing, Feb., 1919
Fourth Printing, Feb., 1919
Fifth Printing, Mar., 1919
Sixth Printing, Mar., 1919
Seventh Printing, April, 1919
Eighth Printing, April, 1919
Printed in the United States of America
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UNTIL Daphne Bretton's peremptory departure from college she hadneither known nor liked her father well enough to distinguishhim with a nick name. But on that momentous day in question,when blurting into the problematical presence of an unfamiliarparent in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar city she flung herunhappy news across his book-cluttered desk, the appellationslipped from her stark lips as though it were the only fluidphrase in a wooden-throated world.
"Old-Dad!" she said, "I have been expelled from college!"
From under the incongruous thatch of his snow-white hair heryoung father lifted his extraordinarily young face with a snarllike the snarl of a startled animal.
"Why?—Why Daphne!" he gasped. "What?"
With her small gloved hand fumbling desperately at the great2muffly collar of her coat the young girl repeated her statement.
"I—I have been expelled from college!" she said.
"Yes, but Daphne!—What for?" demanded her father. His own facewas suddenly as white as hers, his lips as stark. "What for?" hepersisted.
Twice the young girl's lips opened and shut in an utter agony ofinarticulation. Then quite sharply the blonde head lifted, theshoulders squared, and the whole slender, quivering little bodybraced itself to meet the traditional blow of the traditionalAvenger.
"For—for having a boy in my room—at night," said the girl.
Before the dumb, abject misery in the young blue eyes thatlifted so heavily to his, a grin like the painted grin on a sickclown's face shot suddenly across the father's mobile mouth.
"Oh I hope he was a nice boy!" he said quite abruptly. "Blondeor brunette?"
"Why—Why—Father!" stammered the girl. "I—I thought you would—3would kill me!"
"Kill you?" mumbled her father. More essentially at the momenthe seemed concerned with an overturned bottle of ink that wassplashing its sinister pool across his morning's wor