Her eyes were always faintly red rimmed, but there was, notwithstanding, a clear and rain-washed looked about her—the chastened brightness of one who has risen betimes and got her weeping out of the way early. There was subtle comedy about her, perhaps, for the discerning, but there was nothing giddy, nothing grotesque, and the young Glen found herself growing steadily fonder of her. She asked her to supper once, pursuant to her father’s wish that she should make friends, but the affair was hardly a success.
“Whyn’t she play round with young ones of her own age?” Dr. Darrow asked himself wrathfully. “Why in time does she want to train with that old hen?” He was crusty, grudgingly hospitable, and Miz-zada, who had her own delicacies about going to widowers’ houses, never went again.
He piled her plate high with food and criticized her slender appetite rudely. She had always been, she stated, a small eater.
“You look it!” he rejoined briefly. “Live alone—cook for yourself? Thought so! Egg’n-cuppa-tea—malnutrition! I know your kind like a book.”
His attitude toward her put her into the same class with Effie; Glen began at once to protect her. It was rather a blow to have Miss Ada refuse to see the romance and drama in young Luke Manders, but she would, the girl privately thought, as soon as she saw him. It would be easy, then, to persuade her to teach him.
But the splendid young savage, it appeared, was not going to need a teacher for the excellent reason that he would not be there. He refused, persistently and profanely, to leave his gun, his trails, his lawless habitat, and when Dr. Darrow came glumly home to supper one night and reported hearing that Granny Manders was dead, Glen shared with him the conviction of failure. The great-grandmother had been his only urge toward civilization: now that she had folded her leathery little old claws for the last time, he could relapse, unhindered, into the wild ways of his forbears.
Glen stared at her lessons that evening without turning pages. She had small concern with their pallid problems—with how many miles A could walk in an hour, and B in three hours, if C could walk two and one-half miles. Lady Jane Grey’s delicate head dropped from the block without especial emphasis. Her whole preoccupation was with young Luke Manders.
So their golden legend was over! The old crone’s “son’s son’s son” would never be “fotched on” now. All that splendid strength and the fine young possibilities would narrow down to a shot from ambush, himself or his hereditary foe. If he held the family luck, he would bring down the ancient enemy of his house, skulking and hiding thereafter from a languid law; if it went against him, then he would topple forward one sunny day, one silver night, coincidentally with a harmless little popping sound, and lie face downward somewhere on the brown earth, high in his hills, a dark stain widening beneath him.
They stopped talking about him. “That’s finished,” said the doctor gruffly, but Glen could see that disappointment gnawed deep.
Miss Ada was frankly relieved.