The room was really very warm. Jane looked at the smouldering fire. Her glance, wandering casually over the familiar mantelshelf, met the Bard of Avon’s wise mahogany eye. The Bard of Avon always made her think of her wedding ceremony.
“Papa,” said Jane, “how can you tell, how can you possibly tell, just whom your children ought to marry?”
“You can’t,” said Mr. Ward promptly. “But you can make a pretty good guess at whom they ought not to.”
“But how can you stop them?” said Jane.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ward very seriously after a little pause.
“You stopped me,” said Jane. “You stopped me because you made me feel, somehow or other, though I didn’t agree with you, that you were inevitably right. Right, because you were my father. That’s what’s gone out of the family relationship since I was seventeen, Papa. Children don’t think you are right any longer, just because you are a parent.”
“Well, you’re not,” said Mr. Ward promptly. “That’s probably a step in the right direction, kid. What’s known as progress.”
“Well, it makes life terribly difficult for parents,” sighed Jane. “And I can’t help thinking it may make life terribly difficult for children.”
“Life’s terribly difficult at times for everyone,” said Mr. Ward. “A little thing like filial obedience doesn’t solve all the problems.”
“When I think of the ex cathedra pronouncements that Mamma used to make!” cried Jane. “Why, I never thought of questioning them!”
“And were they always right?” asked Mr. Ward.
“They were usually wrong,” said Jane. “But at least they stopped discussion and they decided the issue. Parents used to be just like umpires. All they had to do was to make a decision and stick to it!”
“It wasn’t an ideal system,” was Mr. Ward’s comment.
“You didn’t question it when it was in fashion,” retorted Jane. “You didn’t have the slightest hesitation in forbidding me to marry André. But we loved each other. We truly did, Papa. You never really took that into consideration. I might have been very happy as André’s wife.”
Mr. Ward’s glance was just a little intent as he contemplated his younger daughter.
“You’ve been very happy as Stephen’s wife, kid,” he said gently.
“Yes,” said Jane uncertainly. Words were too crude to define the subtleties of emotion. “Yes, I’ve been happy. But my marrying him was awfully irrelevant.” Suddenly that statement seemed terribly disloyal to Stephen. “You know, Papa,” she said in extenuation, “a war changed everything in my life.”
There was a pause, for a moment, in the sunlit room. Jane did not look at her father, but she knew, without looking, from his sudden, breathless silence that he had suffered a slight sense of shock. She realized then that her words were open to misinterpretation. She glanced quickly up at him. He was shocked. He looked at her a moment a little uncertainly. Then, “Which war, Jane?” he asked steadily.
She was awfully glad that he had put the direct question. In answering it she could answer all the unspoken questions that had been worrying him for the last four years.
“The Spanish one,” she said gravely. “The other didn’t—didn’t really affect my action. I mean—I mean it was all settled before—” Her voice was failing her. She could not bear to mention Jimmy’s name.
“I’m glad to hear it, kid,” said her father gently.
He understood. She would not have to mention it. Jane drew a long breath and felt the emotional tension of the moment snap as she did so. She could return now to the problems of the younger generation.
“All I mean is,” she went on brightly, “you can’t really tell, can you, what will bring your children happiness? Perhaps they ought to decide for themselves—”
As she spoke, Mrs. Ward opened the library door. Isabel followed her into the room. They had been talking together in Mrs. Ward’s bedroom.
“Well, I hope you’ve convinced Jane that she must put her foot down,” said Mrs. Ward briskly. Her hand was on the bell-rope to summon Minnie to bring in the tea.
“Mamma, you don’t know what it’s like to handle Belle and Cicily,” said Isabel wearily.
“I handled you and Jane!” retorted Mrs. Ward. “And very foolish you often were! If it hadn’t been for your father and me—”
Jane and her father burst simultaneously into irreverent laughter. Mrs. Ward looked quite offended.
“You don’t make it any easier, John, to control the grandchildren,” she said severely.
“I’ve retired,” said Mr. Ward, when he had subdued his laughter. “From my family as from my business. At seventy-two I’m glad to be a spectator. I hand the controls over to Jane.”
V
“Jenny’s really so homely,” said Cicily frankly, “that I think we ought to feature it.”
“Feature it?” questioned Flora.
“Yes,” said Cicily, “make her look quaint, you know; as if she were meant to be funny.”
“The first duty of a bridesmaid, in any case,” said Muriel, “is to look less pretty than the bride.”
“No one could help looking less pretty than these brides,” said Flora, with a glance from Belle to Cicily.
Isabel looked pleased. Jane felt herself smiling. Jenny did not seem at all insulted by her sister’s candour.
They were all sitting in Flora’s hat shop. They had just decided on the model for the wedding veils and were now discussing the bridesmaid’s hat.
Flora’s hat shop was doing a booming business. It had been just about to die of inanition three years ago when the Belgian babies came along and gave it a new lease of life. Flora had been planning to close it when the idea came to her to change it into a war charity. “Aux Armes des Alliés,” she had rechristened it, and pasted French war posters
