and cool
judgment. Holding herself in honesty, independence, and integrity the
peer of any man she ever heard of, brave, proud, and self-reliant, she
had schooled herself to study the difference between his social
surroundings and her own. Wells had spoken of Forrest's proud and
powerful kindred in the East, of a mother and sister who held their
heads far higher than ever could John Allison, who forty years before
was but a train-boy peddling peanuts for a livelihood. Even in the
wildly improbable event of her soldier knight's learning to love her,
what madness it would be to expect his people to welcome her, what
madness to think of being his without that welcome! Even if through love
for him they opened their arms to her, what would they say to Mart and
his brood? Jenny's sense of the humorous prevailed over her troubles at
this juncture and made her laugh at the contemplation of that mental
picture. Then she bristled again with honest pride. Mart was her own
brother, anyway, her father's son. He had been a dear boy and she very
fond of him in the old days; he had married beneath him, weakling as he
was; she'd stand by Mart and work for his wife and babies; they would
learn to love Aunt Jenny, and she would forget she ever had cried for
the moon or learned to love a soldier. She didn't love him! She
wouldn't! But here were boxes of exquisite cut flowers that had been
coming in for a fortnight, and here was the sender, his chair close to
hers, and he bending still closer. Then he began to speak, and his
voice--how utterly different it sounded now from that in which she heard
him say good-by to Florence Allison! She wasn't strong yet. How could
she control the throbbing of her heart?

And then the room seemed to begin a slow, solemn waltz, even when she
closed her eyes and firmly shut her hands, for his first words were, "I
have a world of things to say, and only this one blessed evening in
which to speak. I am ordered to my regiment at once."

Coming home later that night, Mr. Wells found the partner of his joys
and sorrows a tearful, lonely wreck on the parlor sofa. Jenny had
disappeared. For all explanation Mrs. Wells drew him by the coat-sleeve
into the room, shut the door behind him, precipitated herself upon her
shoulder, and sobbed, "She--she--she's refused him."

"Well, I suppose she thought he belonged to Miss Allison."

"No, no. It isn't that at all: it's pride. It's obstinacy. I don't know
what to call it