"It’s no use talking about that, my dear, because I know you couldn’t. If you had a hundred dollars, some man would have given it to you, and no man would give it to you unless—" He didn’t finish the sentence, because she hurried on ahead. He reached her only when she stood still, looking down on the river, to spring the question prepared on second thoughts. "But, daddy, if I had a hundred dollars, you’d use it for the taxes—wouldn’t you?—even if I hadn’t got it honestly." A spasm crossed his face. He laid his hand on her shoulder roughly. She could think of nothing but the stern father of a wayward girl as she had seen him pictured in the movies. She hadn’t supposed that such dramatic parents existed off the screen. "Jennie, you haven’t got a hundred dollars! Tell me you haven’t! Don’t let me think that the worst thing of all has overtaken us." Amazed as she was, her feminine quick-wittedness came to her aid. "Oh, you funny daddy!" she laughed, drawing his hand from her shoulder and again slipping it through her arm. "You’re not a bit good at making pretend." "Excuse me, my dear," he said, humbly, as they strolled on once more. "I’m a little nervous. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get a chance to do a day’s work again." Jennie, too, was a little nervous, though she did her best to hide the fact. She had not expected him to take this tragically moral point of view. It made so many new complications as to her twenty-five thousand that she didn’t know where she stood. Her mother might agree with him. Teddy and the girls might agree with her. To act in opposition to them all was outside her sphere of contemplation. Indiana Avenue was indeed not so primitive but that the subject of ladies who chose their own way was frequently under discussion, and Jennie had never heard much condemnation of this liberty except where the associations were considered "low." Where, on the contrary, the situation was on a large financial scale and carried with a lordly hand, opinion, while not approving, was in a measure deferential. It was no secret that Mrs. Inglis had a sister, mysteriously known as "Mrs. Deramore," whose career had been of the most romantic; and whenever her limousine drove up to the Inglis door, as it did perhaps twice a year, all the women crowded to the windows to see the fair occupant get in and out. On one occasion Jennie had heard her mother say to their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Weatherby, "After all, with the kind of world we’ve got to-day, why shouldn’t she?"