"Like her! Like Dr. Harpe?" She took a step toward him, and the intensity in her voice startled him. Her little gray eyes seemed to dart sparks as she answered—"I come nearer hatin' her than I ever have any human bein'!"
"But why?" he persisted. Perhaps in her answer he would find an answer to the question he had but recently asked himself.
There was confusion in the old woman's eyes as they fell before his.
"Because," she answered finally, with a tightening of her lips.
"There's no definite reason? Nothing except your prejudice and this matter you've mentioned?"
A red spot burned on either withered cheek. She hesitated.
"No; I guess not," she said, and turned away.
"If I thought for a moment that her influence over Augusta was not good I'd put an end to this intimacy at once; but I suppose it's natural that she should desire some woman friend and it seems only reasonable to believe that a professional woman would be a better companion than that illiterate Parrott creature or the tittering Starrs." Symes shifted his broad shoulders to the opposite side of the door and his tone was the essence of complacency as he went on—
"Yes, if I had the shadow of a reason for forbidding this silly schoolgirl friendship I'd stop it quick."
The old woman's lips twisted in a faintly cynical smile.