“What?” said the girl herself, who had seen her father and mother talking together in a remote corner of the music-room and had stolen light-footedly upon them just at this moment.
“Lottie, child,” said her mother, undismayed at Lottie’s arrival in her larger anxiety, “I wish you would try and be agreeable to Mr. Breckon. Now that he’s going on with us to Holland, I don’t want him to think we’re avoiding him.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because.”
“Because you want to get him for Ellen?”
“Don’t be impudent,” said her father. “You do as your mother bids you.”
“Be agreeable to that old Breckon? I think I see myself! I’d sooner read! I’m going to get a book now.” She left them as abruptly as she had come upon them, and ran across to the bookcase, where she remained two stepping and peering through the glass doors at the literature within, in unaccustomed question concerning it.
“She’s a case,” said the judge, looking at her not only with relenting, but with the pride in her sufficiency for all the exigencies of life which he could not feel in Ellen. “She can take care of herself.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Kenton sadly assented, “I don’t think anybody will ever make a fool of Lottie.”
“It’s a great deal more likely to be the other way,” her father suggested.