Andrew contested that, but she merely smiled at his arguments.
“Well!” she said. “As for me, when I want something, I go after it—and I generally get it.”
Andrew met her clear, shameless glance, and an unaccountable shudder ran through him. What a girl! What an enemy she would make—or what a pursuer!
She was undoubtedly an interesting and convenient subject for his new study, but he didn’t study her. On the contrary, he avoided her. He shut himself up in his study and tried to write, but the new freedom for his children entailed such a distressing amount of noise and quarreling that he accomplished very little.
He wished to write a long and careful letter to Marian. He was afraid that she hadn’t fully understood, that she was a little hurt, in spite of what she had said; but he found it a remarkably difficult thing to explain to a woman that you are very fond of her and yet wish to be rid of her. He was not the first man who has essayed such a task.
The noise in the dining-room became intolerable. He tore up his third attempt at a letter and went in there, in a very bad temper.
“Why the devil do you stay in here?” he shouted to his young family. “Why aren’t you out in the garden, or at school, or wherever it is your mother sends you? Don’t you know that I’m trying to work?”
Miss Franklin had entered from the kitchen, eating a slice of bread and sugar.
“Ask the cook for some!” she suggested, and the children vanished. “What are you writing?” she inquired frankly.
He didn’t care to mention the letter, so he said: