Her Father's House Read Online Free PDF Page B

autumn flowers. The caterers, who had been recommended by Mr. Buzley, had supplied them, along with superb food and the best champagne.
    â€œI can't believe you didn't invite him,” Donald whispered to the bride.
    â€œHe wouldn't enjoy the company. He's twice our age. Anyway, his wife is terribly sick at home.”
    Nevertheless, he had sent his wedding gift, a silver service for twelve that Lillian described as “Danish silver, about the best there is.”
    â€œI wouldn't know,” Donald said.
    â€œIt costs a fortune, I can tell you, but he thinks nothing of it. He's always doing things like that for people. All the time.”
    The party was lively. First the women all wanted to look at the gifts that Lillian had tactfully stored away. Then someone found the record player and added music to the pleasant hubbub of talk, toasts, clattering china, and popping corks. People were all feeling very, very good.
    Toward the end of the evening, Cindy got drunk and had to lie down in the bedroom, where she managed to smear a faceful of garish makeup on the silk pillow shams. Her current boyfriend, in T-shirt and jeans with hair rippling and beard rumpling to his shoulders, stood out among this gathering of ties and jackets. Nevertheless, everybody enjoyed him, and Donald observed that he “added an exotic note” to the scene.
    â€œCome to think of it, he may be smarter than any two of us here put together. On the other hand, he may not be. God bless him, anyway.”
    So, full of champagne and good humor, he closed the door on the departing guests, set the alarm clock in time for an early departure to Vermont, and took his wife to bed.

Chapter 4
    T hey decided that because the semester had already begun, Lillian would wait until the following fall before starting to work on a master's degree in art.
    â€œIt's what you really want,” Donald said. “So what if you can't be Mrs. Renoir or Mrs. Picasso? You'd do wonderfully in an auction gallery or a museum. With all you already know, you're halfway there. All you need is the degree. And in the meantime, I think it's fine that your boss will let you work three days a week to keep yourself busy.”
    â€œHoward Buzley is absolutely the best.”
    â€œI really should meet him sometime, don't you think?”
    â€œYou wouldn't like him.”
    â€œWhy do you always say that?”
    â€œI don't always say it.”
    â€œWell, you sometimes do. Anyway, why wouldn't I like Buzley when he's been so good to my girl?”
    â€œHe's just not your type.”
    â€œWhat on earth do you think my life is like, that I just go around selecting clients who are ‘my type,' whatever that is?”
    Lillian laughed. “All right, I'll arrange it sometime. But seriously, what am I going to do with the days I don't work? I'm already starting to feel pampered and lazy.”
    â€œIt won't hurt you to take it easy for a change. Do some reading and get a head start on your course. Go out with some women, have lunch, make friends.”
    â€œYou know what, Donald? You're a darling. You're too good to me.”
    Good to her? How else could he be but good to her?
    Every evening when he opened the door and stepped into the hall, he caught sight of the table. Always it was a picture for a luxurious magazine, set with a little pot of flowers, proper china, and Howard Buzley's Danish silver. Often the food was something unusual, culled from the shelf of cookbooks that she had begun to collect.
    â€œI've never done any serious cooking,” she told him, “but now that I've begun, I want to do it perfectly.”
    â€œYou do everything perfectly.”
    One day when he came home, she was all excited. “You can't imagine where I was today. In the penthouse! Oh, you should see it, Donald! I had no idea. It's a regular ranch house, a spacious one with a garden so big that you'd think you were out in the suburbs. Oh, I knew what a