“He is not like me, and I am not like him,” cried Joan. “Mind, you are never to say so, Nessie; and least of all to mother. I can’t bear Mr. Brooke, and I hope we shall never, never, never see him again.”
“It’s odd, though, his being a Mr. Brooke,” said Nessie. “Oh, I suppose—” as the idea dawned slowly on her intellect—“I suppose that was why you would not tell him your name!”
“It was no business of his. Why must he meddle?” asked Joan hotly.
Nessie took refuge in puzzled silence, and the front door was reached without more words. Dulcibel came out to meet them, exclaiming at the condition of Nessie’s boots and skirts. Joan rushed off to her own room, flung aside her wet clothes, and hurried downstairs again, straight to the study.
George Rutherford was writing letters, and merely gave a half-glance up as Joan burst in.
“I am busy, my dear,” he said, expecting her to take a book and sit down, after her wont.
But Joan stood still by his side, and George looked at her a second time—to lay aside his pen. He saw immediately that letters for the next post were not the most pressing matter just then.
“Why, Joan—my dear little girl,” he said tenderly.
Joan dropped down in a careless heap by his side, laying her white face against his knee, and clinging convulsively to the hand which he held out.
“O, father—father—don’t let them take me from you!” she cried, in a tearless, unsobbing anguish of terror.