Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/64

54 "But I don't need any one to look after me, thank heaven! I'm free!"

The old Major stopped at the door.

"And you feel that you can manage it all right? That you can"

For reasons entirely his own he did not finish the sentence.

"I am managing it," the girl quietly asserted.

And Uncle Chandler, in finally taking his departure, experienced at least a qualified relief. The girl was wrong, all wrong. And what was worse, she was much too lovely to the eye to remain unmolested by predaceous man. But she had a will of her own, had Teddie. And, what was more, she might have gone to Paris to "express herself," as she called it. Or she might have tried to find her soul by going on the stage. And the Major knew well enough what that would have meant. After all, the girl would learn to scratch for herself. She would have to. And as old Stillman had intimated, it might do her a world of good!