He frowned.  “I am not sure that I like that.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t I give you money enough?”

“Of course.  But this is different.”

“How different?”

“It is my own.  Don’t you see?”

Being a man he did not see, but Miss Emily did.  “Any work that is worth doing at all is worth being paid for.  You know that, Doctor.”

He did know it, but he didn’t like to have a woman tell him.  “She doesn’t need the money.”

“I do.  I am giving it to the Red Cross.  Please don’t be stuffy about it, Daddy.”

“Am I stuffy?”

“Yes.”

He tried to redeem himself by a rather tardy enthusiasm and succeeded.  Jean brought out more Lovely Dreams, until a grotesque procession stretched across the room.

“Tomorrow,” she announced, triumphantly, “we’ll put them in the window, and you’ll see the children coming.”

As she carried them away, Doctor McKenzie said to Emily, “It seems strange that she should want to do it.”

“Not at all.  She needs an outlet for her energies.”

“Oh, does she?”

“If she weren’t your daughter, you’d know it.”

On the way home he said, “I am very proud of you, my dear.”

Jean had tucked her arm through his.  It was not raining, but the sky was full of ragged clouds, and the wind blew strongly.  They felt the push of it as they walked against it.

“Oh,” she said, with her cheek against his rough coat, “are you proud of me because of my green ducks and my pink pussy cats?”

But she knew it was more than that, although he laughed, and she laughed with him, as if his pride in her was a thing which they took lightly.  But they both walked a little faster to keep pace with their quickened blood.

Thus their walk became a sort of triumphant progress.  They passed the British Embassy with the Lion and the Unicorn watching over it in the night; they rounded the Circle and came suddenly upon a line of motor cars.

“The Secretary is dining a rather important commission,” the Doctor said; “it was in the paper.  They are to have a war feast—­three courses, no wine, and limited meats and sweets.”

They stopped for a moment as the guests descended from their cars and swept across the sidewalk.  The lantern which swung low from the arched entrance showed a spot of rosy color—­the velvet wrap of a girl whose knot of dark curls shone above the ermine collar.  A Spanish comb, encrusted with diamonds, was stuck at right angles to the knot.

Beside the young woman in the rosy wrap walked a young man in a fur coat who topped her by a head.  He had gray eyes and a small upturned mustache—­Jean uttered an exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” her father asked.

“Oh, nothing—­” she watched the two ascend the stairs.  “I thought for a moment that I knew him.”

The great door opened and closed, the rosy wrap and the fur coat were swallowed up.