“There is nothing wrong in my seeing you,” said Bob, stoutly; “if he cares to quarrel with me for that, I cannot help it. If the people I choose for my friends are good people, he has no right to an objection, even though he is my father.”
Cynthia had never come so near real admiration for him as at that moment.
“No, Bob, you must not come,” she said. “I will not have you quarrel with him on my account.”
“Then I will quarrel with him on my own account,” he had answered. “Good-by. You may expect me this day week.”
He went into the hall to put on his overcoat. Cynthia stood still on the spot of the carpet where he had left her. He put his head in at the door.
“This day week,” he said.
“Bob, you must not come,” she answered. But the street door closed after him as he spoke.
CHAPTER IX
“You must not come.” Had Cynthia made the prohibition strong enough? Ought she not to have said, “If you do come, I will not see you?” Her knowledge of the motives of the men and women in the greater world was largely confined to that which she had gathered from novels—not trashy novels, but those by standard authors of English life. And many another girl of nineteen has taken a novel for a guide when she has been suddenly confronted with the first great problem outside of her experience. Somebody has declared that there are only seven plots in the world. There are many parallels in English literature to Cynthia's position,—so far as she was able to define that position,—the wealthy young peer, the parson's or physician's daughter, and the worldly, inexorable parents who had other plans.