Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/134

 She has everything and I have nothing, but she's taken Ben! It ain't right." Her tears fell on the pony's mane. "I like him more than she does—I know I do."

The injustice of life and the seeming futility of combating it fell upon her young shoulders that morning with crushing weight. It was a relief to be alone and to sob her heart out to the unanswering air. She could not make a confidant of her foolish, sentimental mother, nor add to her father's depression by telling him of this new sorrow.

She loved Ben simply and unreservedly, with none of the conflicting emotions which disturbed Nan's peace of mind. He was a man like her father, the only type that had entered into her girlish dreams; she had no romantic notions of a rich husband and a life of which she was ignorant.

She would have been content to have lived over again the life of her mother with its poverty and hardships, providing it was with Ben. She loved him loyally, jealously, with her whole heart, and she wanted him—oh, how she wanted him!—and she had lost him.

This strange girl, whom she could not really