"Phyllis!" he exclaimed; then he stooped a little, his trousers bagging
still more, and he stood in an attitude almost stagy, a flare of choleric
surprise leaping into his face. "Phyllis Sommerton. what _do_ you mean? Are
you crazy? You say that to me?"
The girl--she was just eighteen--faced her father with a look at once
tearfully saucy and lovingly firm. The sauciness, however, was superficial
and physical, not in any degree a part of her mental mood. She could not,
had she tried, have been the least bit wilful or impertinent with her
father, who had always been a model of tenderness. Besides, a girl never
lived who loved a parent more unreservedly than Phyllis loved Colonel
Sommerton.
"Go to your room, miss! go to your room! Step lively at that, and let me
have no more of this nonsense. Go! I command you!"
The stamp with which the Colonel's rather substantial boot just then shook
the floor seemed to generate some current of force sufficient to whirl
Phyllis about and send her up-stairs in an old-fashioned fit of hysteria.
She was crying and talking and running all at the same time, her voice made
liquid like a bird's, and yet jangling with its mixed emotions.
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