Not on your life, I don’t! You couldn’t drag me within sight of the old dump. I’m done with it forever, and I’ll tell the world I’m glad! Why? Don’t you like me? Doesn’t this dress suit you any better? I’ve got some stunners in my trunks. When do you think they will bring them out from the city? Can’t we get a car and go after them? I’m just dying to show you some of my things and the big portrait of Lilla she had taken for the general!”

Greeves arose, white and angry.

“Get on your traveling things at once!” he almost shouted. “We are going back to your school. It is impossible for you to stay here. I am a very busy man. I have important work to do.” He glanced wildly at his watch and then gave a quick look out of the window as he strode to the bell and touched it, flinging open the hall door and looking up the stairs.

“But I am not going back to school!” declared Athalie with a black look. “I’m going to stay right here! I won’t be the least trouble in the world. I’ll have my friends, and you can have yours. I’ll go my way, and you can go yours. That’s the way Lilla and I always did. Only, Daddy Pat, have we got to have that old limb of a housekeeper around? I hate her! I couldn’t get on with her a day. I’m sure I’d shock her. She’s a pie-faced hypocrite, and you’d better fire her. I’ll run the house. I know how! Daddy Pat—may I call you Pat?”

“No!” thundered the scientist. “You may not. You may say ‘Father’ if it’s necessary to call me anything!” He glared at her. “And you may go to your room at once and stay there until I send for you!” he added suddenly, as he glanced once more out of the window and saw an automobile draw up before the door. Then both of them became aware that Anne Truesdale stood in the open door, her face as white as her starched apron, a look of consternation upon her meek face, and her hands clasped nervously at her belt.

Chapter 6

It had not occurred to the minister until he came within sight of the station and heard the whistle of the approaching train that he had come on a most embarrassing errand.

It had appeared to him as he talked with her father and read her letter that the girl he was about to escort to her home might be anywhere between twelve and fifteen years old. His information concerning Patterson Greeves’s history had been vague and incomplete. He looked like a young man for all this experience, and the minister had jumped to the conclusion that both girls were quite young.

But when the train drew up at the station and the only stranger who got out proved to be a lovely young woman dressed with quiet but exquisite taste and with an air of sweet sophistication, he became suddenly aware that the errand he had come upon was one of an exceedingly delicate nature, and he wished with all his soul he had not undertaken it.

She carried a small suitcase in her hand and walked with an air of knowing exactly where she was going. She paused only an instant to glance around her and then went straight to the station waiting room and checked her suitcase. She did it with so much apparent forethought, as if she had been there before and knew exactly what she had to do, that the young man hesitated and looked around for a possible other arrival who might be the girl he had come to meet. But the train snorted and puffed its way slowly into motion and started on, and no other passengers appeared. As she turned away from the checking desk he came hesitantly up to her, and their eyes met.

She was slight and small with a well-formed head poised alertly and delicate features that gave one the sense of being molded and used by a spirit alive to more than the things of this earth. The impression was so strong that he hesitated, with hat lifted in the very act of introducing himself, to look again with startled directness into a face that was so exactly a counterpart of what he had dreamed a girl someday might be that he had the feeling of having been thrust with appalling unreadiness into her presence.

She had violet eyes with a frank clear glance, hair that curled naturally and frilled about her face catching the sunbeams, lips that curved sweetly but firmly, and the complexion of a wild rose newly washed in dew. She looked like a spirit flower that yet was entirely able to take care of herself on earth.

“Is this—” he hesitated, remembering that he did not know her name, and finished lamely, “Mr. Greeves’s daughter?”

She lifted her eyes with a quick searching look and smiled. “You are not—You could not be—my father.”

Bannard smiled.