Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 312, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1918 — Daddy, Alias Carrots [ARTICLE]

Daddy, Alias Carrots

By Jane Osborn

J(Copyright, 1917, by the McClure NewspaE£|£'' per Syndicate.) I Bab was sitting darning' socks in the mellow glow of the living-room tablelight when Babbette appeared at the door. Bab in a graytqfrock with a white fichu, hair parted in the middle and spectacles on her little nose was demure. Babbette was resplendent, captivating. She made one breathe fast just to look at her, standing there with round, bare arms and round young body. Steve, reading his paper and sitting opposite to Bab at the table, swallowed hard and blinked. “What’s the matter, dear,” Bab asked, taking off her glasses and looking at him anxiously. “Doesn't Babbette’s dress look pretty? I copied It after one in a shop window on the avenue. We didn’t think It looked homemadey.” “Oh, that’s all right—it’s immense,” Steve hurried. “That’s not the trouble. I was trying to grasp the idea that, that—that girl there is my daugh-

ter.” r» ’ Steve Nowell rose with his hands in his pockets and paced the room meditatively for a minute, while Bab busied herself fastening the buttons of Babette’s gloves, tucking in a lock of hair here and loosening a few there. Steve paused when he arrived before the mirror over the mantlepiece, peered In and then, striking a match which he took from his smoking-coat pocket, lighted one of Bab’s candles —for ornament only—that stood in brass sticks on the mantlepiece shelf. He held this up to the side of his face and peered In. No, there was not a gray hair in the bushy shock of auburn, scarcely a wrinkle, unless one could call those few crows’ feet—the sort that gather, Steve assured himself, even on the faces of young men who are accustomed to smiling with their eyes. He blew out the candle and clenched his right-hand fingers into a fist and, with his left hand on his right biceps, felt his muscle. Then he straightened himself up to his full six feet, stood on the balls of his feet and inhaled as if to test his lung capacity. “It can’t be,” he told himself. “I’m not ready to be that girl’s father —I’m too young. I’m only a boy—and before many years I’ll be a grandfather? He looked at Bab sitting so contentedly by the lamp. She had resumed her darning and Babbette was standing reading Steve’s paper. Yes, Steve reflected, Bab was content to take a back seat. What was’it to her that old age had been forced upon them and that for all their days and nights to come they must sit. there reading papers and darning socks or, if they did go out, be mere spectators at a play or opera? “What on earth’s the matter with you dad?” queried the eighteen-year-ol<i daughter, glancing up from the paper, and then, not waiting fordiim to answer, “I wonder where Goggles can he? I was sure I’d be late and here he Is keeping me waiting,” she went on. “Goggles, who’s Goggles?” queried Steve.

Bab and Babbette looked up in surprise. “Why. Goggles is Babbette’s pew friend with the eight-cylinder. It makes it so nice for Babette.” “Which —Goggles eight-cylin-der?" queried Steve. “Don’t be silly, dad,” said the resplendent young thing, as she folded her warm arms about Steve and kissed him on the chin in a thoroughly daughterly fashion. “I’m not a bit interested in Goggles—but anyone would dote on his motor.” 1 Steve caught the faint perfume—intoxicating exotic—that clung to his daughter’s evening frock. When he t had courted Bab, he recalled, girls used some simple scent —violet or lily-of-the-valley. Those were simple days. What a thing it must be to be young, Steve thought, young when girls used perfume like that —redolent of strange Eastern romance, Persian gardens in the moonlight, Indian temples and tropical islands. Steve’s impression was Hot distinct but it was none the less vivid. And Goggles, just because he had an eight-cylinder, could share the society of a goddess like Babette. Steve rubbed his eyes as if to wipe the film of twenty years of married life' from them. What a thing to be young again .' he thought. Why, he was young. People often told him he didn’t look thirty, add If it weren’t for that lovely creature there calling him dad he might sometimes forget that he was nearer to the half century mark.

Bab had run off to the telephone bell, and came back with the color of her pink and white cheeks heightened with rage. “Isn’t it perfectly horrid?” she stormed. “It was Goggles and he’s at Nellie Drew’s and telephoned to say stop for me. He says he was at Nellie’s for dinner and Shorty Tucker, who was going to take Nellie telephoned he had been detained and couldn't bring Nellie, so said he would "have to bring Nellie and they’d stop for me. Why didn’t he tell me he was going to have dinner there? Nellie’s an. old cat —I oughtn’t to say that of one of my own fraternity sisters, I . know, but it was 'downright mean —” Babette stopped suddenly and a took

of flashed across her face. ‘'Dad,” she cried seizing him ip her strung arm. “You don’t look thirty and you’rfe a lot better looking than any of the other boys. You take me and don’t let them know you’re my„ father. None of these boys know you -and the lights won't be bright. I’ll call you Carrots ’cause you’ve got auburn hair and it’s a fad you kdow to call the boys some such name. Carrots Clay—that’s a nice name. No, you don’t have to dress —come just as you are and while you’re putting on your but and coat I’ll just telephone in case Goggles and Nellie haven’t started and tell them p friend of mine who happened to be having dinner with me is bringing me, and if they have started and do come, why, mammy, you tell them that I started on with a friend of mine, who was anxious to take me, and -tell them you’re so glad it happened just as it did because this friend of mine was anxious to take me. Dad, you’re a peach. Mammy,‘don’t be lonesome — there’s a dear.” Carrots Clay—alias Bab’s Daddy—alias just plain Steve Nowell —did as he was told, filled meanwhile with a thrilling consciousness that he was to be young again. He wondered why Bab hadn’t asked him to don his evening togs—perhaps young men didn’t dress for small dances in Babbette’s set. At any rate he would dance with the girls and they would all be young and warm and glorious like Babbette. It woulh be a renewal of his youth, only a youth more youthful and thrilling than his own had been because these girls of the present generation were more magnetic, more primitive than girls had ever been before. Just for a night he would be young and then —he winced a little at the idea — he would come back and spend the rest of the nights beside the table with Bab in the gray dress with the capable white hands. Having no eight cylinder Carrots took Babbette to the house where the party was to take place in the street car and so fully was he taking the part thrust upon him, that when passengers in the car looked with unfeigned admiration at the beautiful creature beside him, it w^s with the P rlde of a youth for a maiden, and not with fatherly pride, that he received the attention. \ \ “It’s funny I didn’t have to wear evening dress,” Carrots remarked. “Don’t they usually for dances?”. Then It was that Babbette explained that it wasn’t to be a dance he was taking her. It was to be a fraternity meeting, and all Carrots and the other boys had to do was to sit in the downstairs reception room —they could smoke if they wanted to —while the girls had the meeting upstairs. Itwouldn’t be more than an hour or so and If there were any refreshments left they sometimes sent them down to the boys. The boys usually wafted right there instead of going homfe in the interval, because sometimes the meetings adjourned later and sometimes earlier. At half past nine that night Carrots had been sitting in a chilly, dimly lighted reception room for an hour. From above came the delirious, intoxicating peels of laughter and music from girls like Babbette. Beside him sat Goggles. In a straight-back chair across the room was Shorty, who had come late with the hope of taking Nellie home eventually in spite of Goggles. Other dejected young men sat on other straight-back chairs. They had talked in monosyllables from time to time, but not to him. They seemed to regard him with suspicion and distrust. Eventually Goggles broke the ostracism. “You’re new at this, aren’t you?” Carrots said he was. “You get used to it,” commented Goggles. “You got to do it —if you don’t somebody else will. There’s always somebody else Waiting—just as you were tonight —to take your place, and that always makes you sore.” “It must have been nice,” mused Shorty from across the room, “in the days when our fathers and mothers were young—before girls had -fraternities and things. This way, for every dance they let you go with them you have to sit out an evening like this. But you have to do it.” “Must be nice to be an old fellow and to have the girl you’ve been sitting around for all to yourself—sitting • somewhere near you while you are home and comfortable.” That was from Goggles.' “You bet,” agreed Carrots. 'An hour later Carrots and Babbette found Bab still sitting in the glow of the lamp. A neat pile of socks and Babbette’s gay silk stockings were'before her. Her eyes were heavy, but she smiled radiantly at their return. Steve pulled off his hat and before taking his coat off, rushed to her, lifted her to her feet and held her sleepy form to him. “Bab, you’re the dearest and sweetest in the world. It’s great to be forty-five.”