"I know; you go into the woods and sit down, don't you? I'll bring my book."
"That will be very nice," declared Lettice. Any one who knew the A B C of her expressions must have seen that she was, to put it prettily, as cross as two sticks. Dorothea was not blind; nevertheless, she persisted. They walked in silence, Dorothea now a little ahead, now checking herself back to her companion's unalterable crawl. Arrived at the wood pile, Lettice sat down on the identical bundle of sticks which she had picked out for herself seventeen days before. She was conservative as a cat in all her ways.
The morning was hazy. Round them the woods had been cleared of forest trees; there was a carpet of reddish leathery leaves, across which the great silver boles lay forlorn, amid the white chips of their slaughter. Low bushes were green, and there were leaves overhead, a thin tracery; but elsewhere only russet tones and gray, gray-stemmed saplings and grayish mists. Gray too was Frahan in the valley, softly molded in haze, white the river circling its utterly improbable peninsula, gray the far mountains, pearl-gray and silver, losing themselves in silvery sky. Between her participles and her stitches Lettice would often lift up her eyes to the hills; she dearly loved a distant view. But to-day she was watching her companion.
Dorothea had plumped down among the withered leaves and sat there, hugging her knees and staring gloomily into the forest. To the feminine eye it was plain that she wore no stays; she bent about like a willow wand, and her attitudes were unstudied as a child's. Youth is often tragic; but there was real bitter experience written on those soft childish contours, and it was the contradiction which interested Lettice. Turning her head suddenly, Dorothea caught her with her needle suspended, staring, and broke into her charming smile.
"I want to tell you something about myself; may I?"
Lettice instantly became all attention. Nature had designed her as a casket for confidences, and they were often poured into her patient ear. Dorothea uncurled herself and lay prone, snuggling close, propping her chin in her hands, and looking now on the ground, now up at Lettice with her big soft eyes.
"It's a long tale, but it's really quite funny," she said. "It all began about money. There was a family place, and my father, when he died, left it to me, with his brother as my guardian; but the brother, my uncle, thought it ought to have been left to him direct, do you see?—not to a scrap of a girl. So he was very angry and always bore me a grudge, and I do think he had a sort of grievance, only he needn't have been so horrid about it. He wouldn't have been so bad but for his wife. She was a clever woman, and he was a big soft handsome booby who always believed what she told him; so when she said I was sly and wicked, of course he was sure I was. Well, I lived with them, and they had the use of my money. But they were always most desperately afraid I should get married and take it away. So they wouldn't let me go anywhere. I never went to a dance, I never played tennis, I wasn't even let go out to tea or have any girl friends, not after I was fourteen. Clara (that's what I had to call her) used to go up to town, and shop in Bond Street, and do the round of the theaters, on my money, while I was left at home to dust the drawing-room and wash the stockings. It was funny! Just like Cinderella!"
"Why didn't you run away?"
"I hadn't any money except threepence a week, or any one to run to. Besides—" She hesitated. "You don't know how helpless a girl can be in the hands of a grown-up man," she said, with resurgent bitterness. "He used to tell me I was the sort of girl who makes a man want to thrash her. He did hit me once or twice. Oh! I could have killed him!"
She stabbed the dead leaves viciously with Lettice's scissors.