But she leaned away from him as he would have put his arm about her. “Please don’t try petting me,” she said. “You’ll never be able to make me stand such people. I couldn’t! It isn’t in me to!”
“This is just a little spell you’ve got, Lena; it won’t last. In a few days you’ll begin to feel mighty different, and then when you get to knowing mother a little better, and some of the younger people, like Martha Shelby——”
“Who’s Martha Shelby?”
“You met her and her father this afternoon,” Dan explained. “Harlan and I grew up with her, and she’s one of the finest girls in the world. She’s always just the same—cheerful, you know, and dependable, no matter what happens. You’ll get mighty fond of her, Lena. Everybody always does.”
“Was she that great hulking thing with the dried-up little old father that said, ‘Pleased to meet ye, ma’am?’ ”
Dan laughed uneasily. “Why, Martha isn’t ‘hulking.’ She’s a mighty fine-lookin’ girl! She’s tall, but she isn’t as tall as I am, and she’s——”
“She is that big girl, then,” Lena said with conviction. “I hope you don’t intend to ask me to see anything of her!”
“But, Lena——”
“She’s an awful person!”
“But you’ve just barely met her,” he cried, his distress and perplexity increasing. “You don’t know——”