“You’re a little fool,” she said calmly.  “Let me drive and you can listen to me now.  If you listen to stupid, wicked people talking of your father, then listen to me for a change.  You don’t know anything whatever about him, because you won’t give him a chance to talk to you himself.  If you once let him, you’d very soon stop all this nonsense.”

“You’re bluffing,” he said.  “You think you’ll get round me like that, but you won’t.  You’re only a girl.  You don’t know anything.  It’s men tell me about my father.  You think he’s good, because you love him; but he’s bad, really—­as bad as hell—­as bad as hell.”

“What’s he done then?  I’m not bluffing, Abel.  There’s nothing to bluff about.  What’s your father done to you?  You must have some reason for hating him?”

“Yes, I have.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s because the Mill ought to be mine when he dies—­there!”

She did not answer immediately.  She had often thought the same thing.  Instinct told her that frankness must be the only course.  Through frankness he might still be won.

He did not speak again after his last assertion, and presently she answered in a manner to surprise him.  Directness was natural to Estelle and both her father and her friend, Mr. Churchouse, had fostered it.  People either deprecated or admired this quality of her talk, for directness of speech is so rare that it never fails to appear surprising.

“I think you’re right there, Abel.  Perhaps the Mill ought to be yours some day.  Perhaps it will be.  The things that ought to happen really do sometimes.”

Then he surprised her in his turn.

“I wouldn’t take the Mill—­not now.  I’ll never take anything from him.  It’s too late now.”

She realised the futility of argument.

“You’re tired,” she said, “and so am I. We’ll talk about important things again some day.  Only don’t—­don’t imagine people aren’t your friends.  If you’d only think, you’d see how jolly kind people have been to you over and over again.  Didn’t you ever wonder how you got off so well after trying to burn down the works?  You must have.  Anyway, it showed you’d got plenty of good friends, surely?”

“It didn’t matter to me.  I’d have gone to prison.  I don’t care what they do to me.  They can’t make me feel different.”

“Well, leave it.  We’ve had a good day and you needn’t quarrel with me, at any rate.”

“I don’t know that.  You’re his friend.”

“You surely don’t want to quarrel with all his friends as well as him?  We are going to be friends, anyway, and have some more good times together.  I like you.”

“I thought I liked you,” he said, “but you called me a little fool.”

“That’s nothing.  You were a little fool just now.  We’re all fools sometimes.  I’ve been a fool to-day, myself.  You’re a little fool to hate anybody.  What good does it do you to hate?”