“Oh, it’s a shame, Uncle Charles,” she cried, almost tearfully.  “It’s—­it’s a shame.  I know.  I’m just a kid—­a fool kid who hasn’t a notion, or a feeling, or—­or anything.  I’m to be treated that way.  When he says ‘listen,’ why, I’ve just got to listen.  And when he says ‘obey,’ I’ve got to obey, because the law says he’s my stepfather.  He’s robbed me of my mother.  Oh, it’s cruel.  Now he’s going to rob me of everything else I s’pose.  Who is he?  What is he that he has the power to—­to make me a sort of slave to his wishes?  I’ve never seen him.  I hate him, and he hates me, and yet—­oh—­I’m kind of sorry,” she said, in swift contrition at the sight of the old man’s evident distress.  “I—­I—­didn’t think.  I—­oh, I know it’s not your fault, uncle.  It’s just nothing to do with you.  You’ve always been so kind and good to me—­you and Aunt Sally.  You’ve got to send for me and tell me the things he says, because—­”

“Because I’m his ‘hired man.’  But also because I’m his friend.”

The lawyer spoke kindly, but very firmly.  He knew the impulsive nature of this passionate child.  He knew her unusual mentality.  He realised, none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman’s mind in a girl of childhood’s years.  He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation that he might witness the birth of a millennium in the ashes of a world saturated with the blood of countless, helpless creatures.  So he checked the impulsive flow of the child’s protest.  He held out his hands.

“You’d best let me take your coat, my dear,” he said, with a smile the girl found it impossible to resist.  “Maybe you’d like to remove your overshoes, too.  There’s a big talk to make, and I want to get things fixed so you can come right along up home and take food with us before you go back to Marypoint.”

The child capitulated.  But she needed no assistance.  Her coat was removed in a moment and flung across a chair, and she stood before him, the slim, slightly angular schoolgirl she really was.

“Guess I’ll keep my rubbers on,” she said.  Then she added with a laugh which a moment before must have been impossible.  “That way I’ll feel I can run away when I want to.  What next?”

“Why, just sit right here.”

The lawyer drew up a chair and set it beside his desk.  His movements were swift now.  He had no desire to lose the girl’s change of mood.

And Nancy submitted.  She took the chair set for her while the man she loved to call “Uncle Charlie” passed round to his.  He gave her no time for further reflection, but plunged into his talk at once.