"He doesn't want to go!" Miriam cried.
"But he must. I know what's good for him."
"He looks just like an overgrown dancing bear," Miriam said as she watched the two figures stepping across the moor.
Helen continued her own gloomy thoughts. "No one can like a prig."
"Oh, yes," Zebedee assured her cheerfully, "I can. Besides, you'll grow out of it."
"She never will! She's getting worse, and it's with living here. As a doctor, I think you might prescribe a change for her—for all of us. What will become of us? I can't," she added bitterly, "be expected to marry a dancing bear!"
"If you're speaking of Daniel—" Zebedee began sharply.
"Oh, don't you be cross, too! I did think I had one friend!"
"Daniel's a good man. He may be queer to look at, but he's sound. You only hurt yourself, you know, when you speak like that."
Miriam pouted and was silent, and Helen was not sure whether to be angry with Zebedee for speaking thus to her who must be spoiled, or glad that he could do it to one so beautiful, while he could preserve friendliness for a prig. But her life-long loyalty refused this incipient rivalry; once more she decided that Miriam must have what she wanted, and she lay with clenched hands and a tranquil brow while she listened to the chatter which proclaimed Miriam's recovery.