"
"Oh, Lord! Rivers."
"I am glad to agree with you at least about one thing," said Mrs.
Penhallow. "In September John will be sixteen, and Leila a year or so
younger. She is now simply a big, daring, strong boy."
"If you think that, Ann, you are oddly mistaken."
"I am," she said; "I was. It was only one end of my reasons why she must
go to school. Before John came and when we had cousins here--girls, she
simply despised them or led them into dreadful scrapes."
"Well, Ann, we will talk it over another time."
Rivers smiled and Ann Penhallow went out, longing to attend to the
swollen face now bent low over a book. The two men she left smoked in
such silence as is one of the privileges of friendship. At last Penhallow
said, "Of course, Mark, my wife is right, but I shall miss the girl. My
wife cannot ride with me, and now I am to lose Leila. After school come
young men. Confound it, rector, I wish the girl had less promise of
beauty--of--well, all the Greys have it--attractiveness for our sex. Some
of them are fools, but they have it all the same, and they keep it to the
end. What is most queer about it is that they are not easily won. The men
who trouble hearts for a game do not win these women."
"Some one will suffer," said Rivers reflectively.
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