u can come and break up my school?
You have bullied my father--"

"I'd do worse than bully him, if I had him in handy reach right now,"
Tom drawled, and took her by the shoulder and pushed her inside. "Any
man that will let a woman sit all day in a place like this--and I
don't care a damn if you are earning money doing it!--oughta have his
neck wrung. I'm going to saddle your horse for yuh while you bundle
up. And then you're going home, if I have to herd yuh like I would a
white heifer. I always have heard of Scotch stubbornness--but there's
something beats that all to thunder. Git yore things on. Yore horse
will be ready in about five minutes."

He bettered his estimate, returning in just four minutes to find the
door locked against him. "Don't you _dare_ come in here!" Mary Hope
called out, her voice shrill with excitement. "I--I'll _brain_ you!"

"Oh, you will, will yuh?" Whereupon Tom heaved himself against the
door and lurched in with the lock dangling.

Mary Hope had a stick of wood in her two hands, but she had not that
other essential to quick combat, the courage to swing the club on the
instant of her enemy's appearance. She hesitated, backed and
threatened him futilely.

"All right--fine! Scotch stubbornness--and not a damn thing to back it
up! Where's your coat? Here. Git into it." Without any prelude, any
apology, he wrested the stick of wood from her, pulled her coat off a
nail near by, and held it outspread, the armholes convenient to her
hands. With her chin shivering, Mary Hope obeyed the brute strength of
the man. She dug her teeth into her lip and thrust her arms
spitefully into the coat sleeves.

"Here's yo're hat. Better tie it on, if yuh got anything to tie it
with. Here."

He twitched his big silk neckerchief from his neck, pulled her toward
him with a gentle sort of brutality, and tied the neckerchief over her
hat and under her chin. He did it exactly as though he was handling a
calf that he did not wish to frighten or hurt.

"Got any mittens? Gloves? Put 'em on."

Standing back in the corner behind the door, facing Tom's bigness and
his inexorable strength, Mary Hope put on her Indian tanned, beaded
buckskin gloves that were in the pockets of her coat. Tom waited until
she had tucked the coatsleeves inside the gauntlets. He took her by
the arm and pulled her to the door, pushed her through it and held her
with one hand, gripping her arm while he fastened the door by the
simple method