Page:Ralph Connor - The Sky Pilot.djvu/128

124 immediately useful she refused to trifle with. And so all through the following long winter she vexed my righteous soul with her wilfulness and pride. An appeal to her father was idle. She would wind her long, thin arms about his neck and let her waving red hair float over him until the old man was quite helpless to exert authority. The Duke could do most with her. To please him she would struggle with her crooked letters for an hour at a time, but even his influence and authority had its limits.

"Must I?" she said one day, in answer to a demand of his for more faithful study; "must I!" And throwing up her proud little head, and shaking back with a trick she had her streaming red hair, she looked straight at him from her blue-gray eyes and asked the monosyllabic question, "Why?" And The Duke looked back at her with his slight smile for a few moments and then said in cold, even tones:

"I really don't know why," and turned his back on her. Immediately she sprang at him, shook him by the arm, and, quivering with passion, cried:

"You are not to speak to me like that, and you are not to turn your back that way!"