Nan went down to him sullenly determined to stand by her guns and absolutely refuse to be committed to either a reformatory or any other establishment of a similar character.
"How do you do, my dear?" was Mr. Turner's kindly greeting as the girl entered the room.
Nan replied, "Very well, sir," thinking, at the same time, that she would not be disarmed by kindness nor permit herself to be cajoled into doing anything she did not wish to do. No one really had the right to order her about, and she would resolutely oppose any one who assumed such a right.
But presently she found herself telling her father's friend the story of yesterday's disaster, quite simply and with entire willingness.
"So," Mr. Turner said at the conclusion, "I thought that the good lady must have made a mistake. I felt pretty sure your father's daughter would never be guilty of cowardice nor of deliberately planning to destroy the peace of any one. I knew you could not be the girl Mrs. Newton described. She seemed to think you were—why, my dear, she gave me to understand that you were quite wild and lawless; that you were a bad influence in the neighborhood, and that you were so with full consciousness of what you were doing. We must explain to Mrs. Newton! We must explain!"
"I don't lie!" declared Nan. "And I'm not a coward, and I don't try to make her mad or hurt her children, but I do climb trees and I do race and do figures on roller-skates, and I do do the rest of the things she says I do and that she doesn't like."
"And your school?" ventured the lawyer.
"I don't go any more," announced Nan. "I had a fight with one of the teachers, and so I left."
Mr. Turner gazed suddenly upon the floor.
"And this 'fight' with the teacher? Do you remember the cause of the disturbance?" he asked, looking up after a moment.