Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/30

 up to the sensation of being hopelessly in love. I see plainly that I am a weak character and a poor Worm."

"It's good of you, Bob," said Nan gratefully, "to be so terribly decent about this outbreak of mine. It's comforting to find some one who can take it philosophically. It's made an awful row at home. I'm regarded as little short of a criminal—the wild 'un' of the flock.

"I am tremendously fond of my family, individually. They are dears. Collectively, they are a formidable, terrifying lot, and they are all lined up against me in this, to a man.

"They impress it upon me that I am breaking my mother's heart, bringing my father's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, making my only sister a target for the finger of scorn and ruining her prospects, setting my young brother a ruinous example. I'm a bad lot! I'm all the erring daughters since the world began, rolled into one. And the queer part of it is, the more they oppose me, the more determined I am to carry out my program.

"I know I'm heartless, disobedient, ungrateful, a serpent they've warmed in their