"Hint?" snapped her father. "Oh, it wasn't so much the adaptability business I was thinking about as it was about the dog!" With a gesture almost embarrassed he reached down suddenly and drew the hound's plushy ear through his fingers. "Oh, hang it all, Daphne!" he resumed quite abruptly, "you and I might easily not like the same opera [35] or the same hors-d'oeuvre--but I'd hate anyone round who didn't like the same dog." "I--adore--Creep-Mouse!" said Daphne. "Truly?" quizzed her father. "Truly!" twinkled Daphne. "Oh, all right then," said her father, "I guess we understand each other!" "Perfectly," nodded Daphne. "For all time," said her father. "All time," acquiesced Daphne. With his watch in his hand and his dark eyes narrowed to some unspoken thought he thrust out his last admonishment to her. "Then take all the brace there is!" he said, "and hustle out and get some new clothes! It's quite lucky on the whole, I imagine, that you didn't have time to pack up any of your college things for you certainly won't need anything--academic in the place we're heading for! It's not any South that you've ever heard of that we're going to, you understand?" he explained with the faintest possible tint of edginess in his tone. "No Palm Beaches! No pink sash-ribbons! No tennis! No velvet golf courses! No airy--fairy--anythings! But a South below the South! A [36] South all heat and glare and sweat and jet-greens jungles! Tropics and slime! Rough! Tough! Pretty nasty some of the time. Violently beautiful--almost always! And we're going down to _hunt_!" he added with certain decisiveness. "And to _fish_! And to study citrus fruits when there's nothing else to do! And you might just as well know it now as later," he resumed with all his old insouciance. "I--am--also going to find me a wife if such a thing is humanly possible." "A--wife?" gasped the girl. "Oh, this--this eternal marrying business!" she shivered. "If it's all so dreadful, about men, I mean, why do women keep marrying? What's the righteousness of it? What's the decency? What's it all about?" "Don't forget that I'm one of these 'dreadful men,'" smiled her father. "Yes--I--know," quivered the girl. "But----" Like a butterfly slipping out of its cocoon one shoulder slipped lacy-white from the blue puffy-quilt. "What about my own mother?" she demanded. "Your mother has been dead for fifteen years," said the man. [37] "Yes--but Father," persisted the girl. With folded arms the man stood watching her bright young color wax--and wane again. "If there's anything you want to ask," he suggested, "maybe you'd better ask it now--and get it over with." "Oh, I didn't want to be inquisitive," stammered the girl. "It's only that--that servants and relatives talk so--and I know so little. You--you and mother didn't live together, did you?" she questioned quite abruptly. "No," said the man. "You--you mean there was trouble?" flushed the girl. "There was--some trouble," said the man.