SON OF THE WIND
"You strange girl, you did. Just a little while ago, I had to coax you to get you to come out at all."
"O, that was different," she said. They were walking together down to the moon-misted hall.
"Different?"
"Yes. I was afraid of them, I was afraid of everything, because, well—"
"Out with it!"
The fire of mischief, and of something bigger, looked through her eyes. "I didn't know then what you thought of me," she said, and ran ahead of him down the stair.
He did not feel certain what trouble she was about to plunge him into, with her headlong determination to bend her mother's resolute mind. He could think of no argument subtle, and appealing to Mrs. Rader's hospitality or vanity which he had not employed himself, and quite in vain. But the girl seemed to entertain no doubts of herself, though she entered the dining-room, just after the laggard scholar was seated, and could not, therefore, have already interviewed her mother, who had been at table when Carron first came in. No word had passed between these two, while they waited for the others. They had gone beyond the banalities, and what they had had to say of importance to one another was
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