"Well, they are all that I say, are they not?" asked the Colonel.
"Oh, yes!" and Claire leaned indifferently away from her father's shoulder. He glanced at her and sighed. They entered the hotel in silence, each one busy with somber thoughts, and as the Chinaman closed the door behind them Claire suddenly flung her gloves on the table with a gesture of impatience and turning to the Colonel said passionately:
"Father, look at me! Am I like those other girls? Do I look like them or act like them or talk like them? Is my heart like theirs? Oh, father, do you suppose they ever have the fits of awful temper that I have, or do the wild things I like to do? Just look at me, father! I am thirteen years old, and I feel thirty. Why do you make me have anything to do with them—those girls, I mean? We won't be friends, ever. It will be just like it has always been on other Posts where you have been stationed. You always want me to make friends with girls. And I hate them! And sooner or later they find it out and they are shocked. I wish I could shock them worse than I do! I'd like to scream and dance and pull my hair at them!"
"Steady, Claire, steady!" said Colonel Maslin in a quiet level voice.
He tried to take his daughter's hands but she jerked away.
"Don't!" she exclaimed harshly. "Oh, father, can't you see how it is? Can't you see that they never, never like me? They look at my red hair, and they stare at Chang, and snub Nancy because they think that is the way to treat my maid, and they like the candy you always bring me, but we are never friends. Oh, I hate them all: every one of them! Sunbeams you call them. Well, I feel like a streak of lightning, and I would like to strike them!"
She beat her slender hands together violently, and crossing the room flung herself down on a divan and covered her eyes. Her father, white faced and stern, followed her and seated himself on the edge of the divan, although Claire lay rigid and tried to crowd him off.
Colonel Maslin was silent for a time, and when he spoke his voice was very sad.
"This is my fault, my child," he said. "When your mother was taken ill and could not be with us, I could not face the loneliness of having you away from me. Both your aunts insisted that I was wrong, but I wanted you for comfort, my darling, so I took you with me. Later, when I should have sent you to a good boarding-school, I did not have the courage. You are old for your age, I confess it, yet in many ways you are a spoiled and undisciplined child, my dear. You make it very hard for me, for I need you and you fail me. Now I am going to ask one more favor of you. After that, after you have honestly tried to do what I ask you, we will consider the subject closed for all time and you will go away to school."
"You know I hate that worst of all!" cried Claire, lifting a stained and tearful face. "Nothing but girls at school! Oh, father, why can't you let me do what I want to do, just amuse myself my own way, when I am not studying? You know I work hard at my books and music, and I don't want any friends. Girls are so curious, they always want to know things, and I am so afraid they will find out—"