Mrs. Gano had some ado to recover her rigid attitude of respect for those in authority over her grandchild; but she relaxed the upward tension of her eyebrows and was studying Val straight through her spectacles.
"You can learn manners at home. Miss Beach is quite competent to teach Emmie spelling and you dancing and calisthenics, and her manners are not your business. It is only the young people who are quite perfect themselves who can waste time criticising their elders."
"Yes'm," answered Val, meekly. She was surprised that her crowning misdeed and public disgrace were taken so calmly. "Please, who's going to tell my father I'm expelled?"
"Nobody is to tell him anything of the sort!" she fired up. "Now that things have come to this pass I must try to make you understand. We can't go on like this. What you have done to-day would disgrace a street urchin; and yet you are old enough to be a comfort to your father."
Val fidgeted miserably.
"You have given us more trouble than all the other children of the family put together; and yet I have discovered there is a kind of reasonableness in you when it's deliberately appealed to."
Val looked up quickly. She felt there was a new note in these remarks.
"I should be very sorry to go to your father with this miserable story; he has enough to trouble him, and he is ill; he does not get better." She had laid convulsive hold on the red-padded arms of the great rocking-chair, and the purple veins started up on the long hands. "I sometimes think—I sometimes think he gets worse." Her voice had sunk very low. There was a look in the waxen features that made the girl's heart grow chill. "I have noticed your impulse to be considerate towards your father, to spare him the knowledge of your antics. I have been glad you had this instinct. You will be glad when you are older—when you are alone."
There was a long silence. Neither looked at the other. Presently, with lowered eyes, Val came closer, and on a sudden impulse, kneeling, she laid her cheek on the long left hand that still clutched the chair-arm.