Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/204

 Fred bore the rebuff manfully, though it felt as grating and as blinding as a sudden prairie sandstorm. He turned and looked at her as she walked erect and strong by his side. A more defiant-looking young person he had never seen, nor a more altogether desirable one. Good heavens! the very curve of her chin was worth dying for, and Fred drew a deep breath and swore within himself that she should yet be vanquished.

The rest of that day Mary tried vainly to believe that her panic had been foolish and uncalled for. But she knew better. She feared that it was unmaidenly and conceited; that she was deserving of all the worst epithets usually applied to a forward girl; but she knew as positively as though Fred had told her so in plain English that this remarkably strong-willed young man was planning to overturn her whole scheme of life, to wrest from her her precious independence, to make her life subordinate to his. She would not allow herself to think in terms less harsh of his designs, and she put herself on the defensive in a manner so transparent that it would have been amusing to any one less immediately interested in her state of mind than Fred.

He meanwhile did his best to retrieve that first blunder by the exercise of an almost superhuman discretion. He saw his opportunity slipping away with the fleeting vacation days; he knew that in a cruelly short time Mary would be once