At four o’clock in the afternoon she roused Christa and apportioned a certain bit of work to her.  There was a young man in Fentown called David Brown, a comely young fellow, belonging to one of the richer families of the place.  He was good-natured, and an athlete; he had of late fallen into the habit of dropping in frequently to drink Ann’s beer.  She felt no doubt that Christa was his attraction.  Some weeks before he had boasted that he had found the bed of a creek which made its way through the drowned forest, and that by it he had paddled his canoe through the marsh that lay to the north of the lake.  He had also boasted that he had a secret way of finding the creek again.  Upon considering his character Ann believed that although the statement was given boastfully it was true.  Brown had a trace of Indian blood in him, and possessed the faculties of keen observation and good memory.  It was by the help of this secret that she had hoped to extricate her father herself.  There was still a chance that she might be able to use it.

“Some men think the world and all of a woman if they can only get into the notion that she is ill-used.  David may be more sweet on you than ever,” said Ann to Christa.  “Put on your white frock:  it’s a little mussed, so it won’t look as if you were trying to be fine; don’t put on any sash, but do your hair neatly.”

She will look taking enough, thought Ann to herself; she did not despise herself for the stratagem.  It was part of the hard, practical game that she had played all her life, for that matter; she was not conscious of loving Christa any more than she was conscious of loving her father.  It was merely her will that they should have the utmost advantage in life that she could obtain for them.  Nothing short of a moral revolution could have changed this determination in her.

When Christa had performed her toilet, obeying Ann from mere habit, Ann drilled her in the thing she was to do.  Brown would of course suspect what this information was to be used for.  Christa was to coax him to promise secrecy.  Ann went over the details of the plan again and again, until she was quite sure that the shallow forgetful child understood the importance of her mission.

Christa sat with her elbows on the table and cried a little.  Her fair hair was curled low over her eyes, the coarse white dress hung limp but soft, leaving her neck bare.  With all her motions her head nodded on her slender graceful neck, like a flower which bows on its stalk.

Before this disaster Christa had spent her life laughing; that had been more becoming to her than sullenness and tears.  For all that, Ann was not sorry that Christa’s eyelids should be red when David Brown was seen slowly lounging toward the window.

He had not been to see them the day before; it was apparent from his air that he thought it was not quite the respectable thing to do to-day.  He tried to approach the house with a nonchalant, happen-by-chance air, so that if any one saw him they would suppose his stopping merely accidental.