“Now dry your eyes and be a good girl, and remember what you've promised,” she admonished kindly. “Aunt Phoebe didn't mean to scold you, honey; she only wants you to feel that you belong here, and she wants you to like her boys and have them like you. They've always wanted a sister to pet; and Aunt Phoebe is hoping you'll not disappoint her. You'll try; won't you, Vadnie?”
“Y—yes,” murmured Vadnie meekly from the pillow. “I know you will.” Phoebe looked at her for a moment longer rather wistfully, and turned away. “I do wish she had some spunk,” she muttered complainingly, not thinking that Evadna might hear her. “She don't take after the Ramseys none—there wasn't anything mushy about them that I ever heard of.”
“Mushy! MUSHY!” Evadna sat up and stared at nothing at all while she repeated the word under her breath. “She wants me to be gentle—she preached gentleness in her letters, and told how her boys need it, and then—she calls it being MUSHY!”
She reached mechanically for her hair-brush, and fumbled in a tumbled mass of shining, yellow hair quite as unbelievable in its way as were her eyes—Grant had shown a faculty for observing keenly when he called her a Christmas angel—and drew out a half-dozen hairpins, letting them slide from her lap to the floor. “MUSHY!” she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed her face and those eyes of hers. “I suppose that's what they all say behind my back. And how can a girl be nice WITHOUT being mushy?” She drew the brush meditatively through her hair. “I am scared to death of Indians,” she admitted, with analytical frankness, “and tarantulas and snakes—but—MUSHY!”
Grant stood smoking in the doorway of the sitting-room, where he could look out upon the smooth waters of the pond darkening under the shade of the poplars and the bluff behind, when Evadna came out of her room. He glanced across at her, saw her hesitate, as if she were meditating a retreat, and gave his shoulders a twitch of tolerant amusement that she should be afraid of him. Then he stared out over the pond again. Evadna walked straight over to him.
“So you're that other savage whose manners I'm supposed to smooth, are you?” she asked abruptly, coming to a stop within three feet of him, and regarding him carefully, her hands clasped behind her.
“Please don't tease the animals,” Grant returned, in the same impersonal tone which she had seen fit to employ—but his eyes turned for a sidelong glance at her, although he appeared to be watching the trout rise lazily to the insects skimming over the surface of the water.
“I'm supposed to be nice to you—par-TIC-ularly nice—because you need it most. I dare say you do, judging from what I've seen of you. At any rate, I've promised. But I just want you to understand that I'm not going to mean one single bit of it. I don't like you—I can't endure you!—and if I'm nice, it will just be because I've promised Aunt Phoebe. You're not to take my politeness at its face value, for back of it I shall dislike you all the time.”
Grant's lips twitched, and there was a covert twinkle in his eyes, though he looked around him with elaborate surprise.
“It's early in the day for mosquitoes,” he drawled; “but I was sure I heard one buzzing somewhere close.”