Then Sinton’s eyes came up straightly.

“Finding her on the trail last night sobbing as hard as I ever saw any one at a funeral.  She wasn’t complaining at all, but she’s come to me all her life with her little hurts, and she couldn’t hide how she’d been laughed at, twitted, and run face to face against the fact that there were books and tuition, unexpected, and nothing will ever make me believe you didn’t know that, Kate Comstock.”

“If any doubts are troubling you on that subject, sure I knew it!  She was so anxious to try the world, I thought I’d just let her take a few knocks and see how she liked them.”

“As if she’d ever taken anything but knocks all her life!” cried Wesley Sinton.  “Kate Comstock, you are a heartless, selfish woman.  You’ve never shown Elnora any real love in her life.  If ever she finds out that thing you’ll lose her, and it will serve you right.”

“She knows it now,” said Mrs. Comstock icily, “and she’ll be home to-night just as usual.”

“Well, you are a brave woman if you dared put a girl of Elnora’s make through what she suffered yesterday, and will suffer again to-day, and let her know you did it on purpose.  I admire your nerve.  But I’ve watched this since Elnora was born, and I got enough.  Things have come to a pass where they go better for her, or I interfere.”

“As if you’d ever done anything but interfere all her life!  Think I haven’t watched you?  Think I, with my heart raw in my breast, and too numb to resent it openly, haven’t seen you and Mag Sinton trying to turn Elnora against me day after day?  When did you ever tell her what her father meant to me?  When did you ever try to make her see the wreck of my life, and what I’ve suffered?  No indeed!  Always it’s been poor little abused Elnora, and cakes, kissing, extra clothes, and encouraging her to run to you with a pitiful mouth every time I tried to make a woman of her.”

“Kate Comstock, that’s unjust,” cried Sinton.  “Only last night I tried to show her the picture I saw the day she was born.  I begged her to come to you and tell you pleasant what she needed, and ask you for what I happen to know you can well afford to give her.”

“I can’t!” cried Mrs. Comstock.  “You know I can’t!”

“Then get so you can!” said Wesley Sinton.  “Any day you say the word you can sell six thousand worth of rare timber off this place easy.  I’ll see to clearing and working the fields cheap as dirt, for Elnora’s sake.  I’ll buy you more cattle to fatten.  All you’ve got to do is sign a lease, to pull thousands from the ground in oil, as the rest of us are doing all around you!”

“Cut down Robert’s trees!” shrieked Mrs. Comstock.  “Tear up his land!  Cover everything with horrid, greasy oil!  I’ll die first.”

“You mean you’ll let Elnora go like a beggar, and hurt and mortify her past bearing.  I’ve got to the place where I tell you plain what I am going to do.  Maggie and I went to town last night, and we bought what things Elnora needs most urgent to make her look a little like the rest of the high school girls.  Now here it is in plain English.  You can help get these things ready, and let us give them to her as we want——­”