“Do you think you’re the person to judge him—a boy like you?”
“I don’t say I am. I only say that print——”
“How do you know he took the negative?”
“I don’t, but——”
“But you jump to conclusions like a baby!” cried the girl, too quick for him in following up a confusing advantage. “I never heard anybody like you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he must have made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep with a loaded revolver, and then you’re sure you never fired at all, simply because you find the revolver fully loaded after days and days! Then you find a photograph that needn’t necessarily be what we thought it, that my uncle needn’t have taken even if it was; but you jump to another conclusion about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as though you knew every horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew him and I didn’t! As if he hasn’t been kind and good to me for years and years—and kind to you—far too kind——”
The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it and them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well of those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not imperiously any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed her. The boy’s answer was to go close up to her instead. “Will you come with me?” he asked hoarsely.
She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she could only shake her head.
“My people would be as good to you as ever he was,” urged Pocket extravagantly. “They’d understand, and you’d stay with us, Phillida! You might live with us altogether!”
She smiled very faintly at that.
“Oh, Phillida, can’t you see that they’d do anything for you after all we’ve been through together? And I, oh! there’s nothing I wouldn’t do if only you’d come with me now this minute! I know there’s a train about ten, and I know where we could borrow the money on the way. Come, Phillida, get on your things and come away from all this horror!”