y?" The man
shrugged. "It's not because she lacks feeling. Oh, no. Maybe it's
because of the strength of those feelings. Remember her mother married
Leslie when the child was thirteen. A good understanding age. She was
never allowed to see her father. No. She was packed off to school and
kept there--"

"Yes, I know," Sarah broke in, with impatient warmth. "And just at the
time a girl most needs she never even saw her mother for over three
years. God doesn't give us women our babies to treat them as if they
weren't our own flesh and blood. Young Nancy was left to those maiden
dames at college, who don't know more about a child than is laid down by
highbrow officials in the text books they need to study to qualify for
their posts. They haven't a notion beyond stuffing her poor wee head
with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books. They say
she's clever and bright. Well, that's all they care about. When they've
done with her they'll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned
her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with
her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe
'bobbed,' and they'll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature
enough to stock a patent med'cine factory, instead of the lawn, and
lace, and silk a girl should think about, and leave her with as much
chance of getting happily married as a queen mummy of the Egyptians.
It's a shame, just a real shame. Why, if that poor, lonesome child came
right along to me, I'd--"

"Teach her all the bright tricks of hunting down a husband and--hooking
him." The lawyer shook his head and smiled. "You know, Sally, you're
almost an outrage on the subject of marriage. Sometimes I wonder the
sort of tricks I was up against when I--"

A plump warning finger and smiling threat interrupted the laughing
charge.

"You were due at the office long ago, Charles," his wife admonished. "If
you aren't careful I'll have to pack you off right away."

"That's all right, Sally," the man demurred. "I won't go further with
that. I'll get back to the things I was saying before you interrupted."
His pale blue eyes became serious again. "Do you think Nancy didn't
understand why she was packed off to school--and kept there? Of course
she did. She knew she wasn't wanted. She knew she was in the way. She
must not be permitted to intrude on this stepfather, or her mother's
new life. It was all a bit heartless, and if I know anyt