He mercifully lost part of this sentence, for the reason that before it was concluded he was moving with long, angry strides up the alley.
And then Mart took the broken-nosed pitcher away into the furthermost corner, although she was alone in the room, and laid her face against the cool, pure lily, and wept into it great burning tears. Poor, ignorant soul! She wanted, oh, how she wanted Dirk to be brave and good like Mark Calkins—her one type of manhood. Yet she did not know that she was crushing out the germ which might have grown in his heart. True, she knew herself to be very different from Sallie, but the thought, poor soul, that that was because Mark was so different from Dirk.
Isn't it a pity that the sweet-faced lily could not have told its tender story to both these ignorant ones?
CHAPTER XV. — “WHAT MADE HER DIFFERENT?”
“I have heard a good deal about your sister that has interested me. Do you like to talk of her?”
This was the question which Gracie Dennis asked of young Ried as he stood beside her at the piano. She had been playing, and had come to the music alcove for the purpose of turning her music; but now she was touching sweet chords here and there aimlessly, and waiting for his answer.
At the further end of the parlor Mrs. Roberts was entertaining a caller; but the distance between them was so great that, in effect, the young people were alone.
“I like nothing better than to talk of her.” Mr. Ried said, with animation; “but I don't know so much about her as I wish I did. She went away when I was quite young. I used to say 'she died,' but since I have awakened to see her cherished plans being carried on all around me I cannot think of her as dead.”