"Come down? Why, that's easy! But I don't want to come down."
Mrs. Kennedy's lips grew stern.
"Genevieve," she said, with an obvious effort to speak quietly; "if you can come down, I desire you to do so at once."
Genevieve came down. Her eyes flashed a little, and her cheeks were redder than usual. She did not once glance toward the girls, clustered in a silent, frightened little group. She did not appear to notice even her father, standing by. She went straight to Mrs. Kennedy.
"I've come down, Aunt Julia."
Mrs. Kennedy had been seriously disturbed, and genuinely frightened. To her, Genevieve's climb to the top of the windmill tower was very dangerous, as well as very unladylike. Yet it was the fright, even more than the displeasure that made her voice sound so cold now in her effort to steady it.
"Thank you, Genevieve. Please see that there is no occasion for you to come down again," she said meaningly. Then she turned and went into the house.
Just how it happened, Genevieve did not know, but almost at once she found herself alone with her father on the back gallery. The girls had disappeared.
Genevieve was very angry now.
"Father, it wasn't fair, to speak like that," she choked, "before the girls and you, when I hadn't done a thing—not a thing! Why, it—it was just like Miss Jane! I never knew Aunt Julia to be like that."