“Are you taking Hilda’s part, Daddy?”

“No, my dear, of course not.”  He came over and kissed her.  “Will you ride with me this morning?”

“Oh, yes—­how soon?”

“In ten minutes.  After I see this patient.”

In less time than that she was ready and waiting for him in her squirrel coat and hat and her little muff.

Her father surveyed her.  “Such a lovely lady.”

“Do you like me, Daddy?”

“What a question—­I love you.”

Safe in the car, with the glass screen shutting away the chauffeur, Jean returned to the point of attack.

“Hilda makes me furious, Daddy.  I came to talk about her.”

“I thought you came because you wanted to ride with me.”

“Well, I did.  But for this, too.”

Over her muff, her stormy eyes surveyed him.  “You think I am unreasonable about meatless and wheatless days.  But you don’t know.  Hilda ignores them, Daddy—­you should see the breadbox.  And the other day she ordered a steak for dinner, one of those big thick ones—­and it was Tuesday, and I happened to go down to the kitchen and saw it—­and I told the cook that we wouldn’t have it, and when I came up I told Hilda, and she laughed and said that I was silly.

“And I said that if she had that steak cooked I would not eat it, and I should ask you not to eat it, and she just stood with her hands flat on your desk, you know the way she does—­I hate her hands—­and she said that of course if I was going to make a fuss about it she wouldn’t have the steak, but that it was simply a thing she couldn’t understand.  The steak was there, why not eat it?  And I said it was because of the psychological effect on other people.  And she said we were having too much psychology and not enough common sense in this war!

“Well, after that, I went to my Red Cross meeting at the church.  I expected to have lunch there, but I changed my mind and came home.  Hilda was at the table alone, and, Daddy, she was eating the steak, the whole of it—.”  She paused to note the effect of her revelation.

“Well?”

“She was eating it when all the world needs food!  She made me think of those dreadful creatures in the fairy books.  She’s—­she’s a ghoul—­”

“My dear.”

“A ghoul.  You should have seen her, with great chunks of bread and butter.”

“Hilda has a healthy appetite.”

“Of course you defend her.”

“My dear child—­”

“Oh you do, Daddy, always, against me—­and I’m your daughter—­”

She wept a tear or two into her muff, then raised her eyes to find him regarding her quizzically.  “Are you going to spoil my ride?”

“You are spoiling mine.”

“We won’t quarrel about it.  And we’ll stop at Small’s.  Shall it be roses or violets, to-day, my dear?”

She chose violets, as more in accord with her pensive mood, lighting the bunch, however, with one red rose.  The question of Hilda was not settled, but she yielded as many an older woman has yielded—­to the sweetness of tribute—­to man’s impulse to make things right not by justice but by the bestowal of his bounty.