Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/73

 "She goes to see him rarely, more often he comes here. And she dreads his coming always. I begin to know when it is time for another visit from him, when she starts at the creaking of the gate and begins to look frightened when she hears a step coming up the path. She has been in worse uneasiness than ever, these last weeks, so I'm thinking she just decided that it was better to dare than to dread, so she was off to see him and have it over."

"But why," persisted Betsey, "why should she be afraid of her own cousin when he grew up with her?"

"It's past my understanding," Michael admitted, "and I've thought and wondered over it until my mind was all at sea. I'm not of her kind, so it's a puzzle that I can't solve. It has something to do with her old father, and that machine he is making, that far I have got, but no farther. He is a clever one, the old man; he has been famous once and I'll wager you, when that piece of work is done, he will make the world talk of him again. But there's something wrong and if one but knew what it was, maybe it could be put right. When I knew them first they were all so happy, living there in the big house at the summit of the hill, they seemed to have everything in life there was to wish for, but since then the house has burned and Mr. Ted has gone away to the wars, and there's things gone badly