Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/201

 either that she had reconciled herself to her position, or that she meditated something which he did not understand.

Mrs. Sharland did not share in her daughter's exultation. She grumbled and protested. She was very comfortable at Red Hall, she was sure Elijah had been exceedingly kind to them. They had wanted nothing. The house was much better than the old ramshackle Ray, and their position in it superior to any they could aspire to at the Rose. This was a hint to Mehalah, but the girl refused to take it. As for Elijah, what was there to object to in him? He was well off, very well off, a prosperous man, who spent nothing on himself, and turned over a great deal of money in the year. He was not very young, but he was a man who had seen the world and was in his prime of strength and intelligence. Mrs. Sharland thought that they could not do better than settle at the Red Hall and make it their home for life, and that Mehalah should put her foolish fancies in her pocket and make the best of what offered.

But Mehalah's determination bore down all opposition.

St. Valentine's Day shone bright with a promise of spring. The grey owls were beginning to build in the hayrick, the catkins were timidly swelling on the nut bushes; in the ooze the glasswort shot up like little spikes of vitriol-green glass. A soft air full of wooing swept over the flats. The sun was hot.

The tide flowed at noon, and Elijah was absent.

Mehalah, deaf to her mother's remonstrances, removed some of their needful articles to the boat, and at last led her mother, well wrapped up, to the skiff.

When the girl had cast loose, and was rowing on the sparkling water, her heart danced and twinkled with the wavelets; there was a return of spring to her weary spirit, and the good and generous seeds in her uncultivated soul swelled and promised to shoot. She was proud to think that she had carried her point, that in spite of Rebow, she had established her freedom, that her will had proved its power of resistance. She even sang as she rowed, she,—whose song had been hushed since the disappearance of George. She had not forgotten him, and cast away her grief at his loss, but the recoil from the bondage and moral 7*