“It’s Marjorie, Robert,” she said simply, and the old gentleman, who had seen Jason come out of the yard gate and gallop toward John Burnham’s, guessed what the matter was, and he took the slim white hands that were clenched together and patted them gently: 

“There—­there!  Don’t worry, don’t worry!”

He led her into the house, and at the top of the steps stood Marjorie in white, her hair down and tears streaming down her face: 

“Come here, Marjorie,” called Colonel Pendleton, and she obeyed like a child, talking wildly as she came: 

“I know what you’re going to say, Uncle Bob—­I know it all.  I’m tired of all this talk about family, Uncle Bob, I’m tired of it.”

She had stopped a few steps above, clinging with one trembling hand to the balcony, as though to have her say quite out before she went helplessly into the arms that were stretched out toward her: 

“Dead people are dead, Uncle Bob, and only live people really count.  People have to be alive to help you and make you happy.  I want to be happy, Uncle Bob—­I want to be happy.  I know all about the Pendletons, Uncle Bob.  They were Cavaliers—­I know all that—­ and they used to ride about sticking lances into peasants who couldn’t afford a suit of armor, but they can’t do anything for me now, and they mustn’t interfere with me now.  Anyhow, the Sudduths were plain people and I’m not a bit ashamed of it, mother.  Great-grandfather Hiram lived in a log cabin.  Grandfather Hiram ate with his knife.  I’ve seen him do it, and he kept on doing it when he knew better just out of habit or stubbornness, but Jason’s people ate with their knives because they didn’t have anything but two-pronged forks—­I heard John Burnham say that.  And Jason’s family is as good as the Sudduths, and maybe as the Pendletons, and he wouldn’t know it because his grandfathers were out of the world and were too busy, fighting Indians and killing bears and things for food.  They didn’t have time to keep their family trees trimmed, and they didn’t care anything about the old trees anyhow, and I don’t either.  John Burnham has told me—­”

“Marjorie!” said the colonel gently, for she was getting hysterical.  He held out his arms to her, and with another burst of weeping she went into them.

Half an hour later, when she was calm, the colonel got her to ride over home with him, and what she had not told her mother Marjorie on the way told him—­in a halting voice and with her face turned aside.

“There’s something funny and deep about him, Uncle Bob, and I never could reach it.  It piqued me and made me angry.  I knew he cared for me, but I could never make him tell it.”

The colonel was shaking his old head wisely and comprehendingly.

“I don’t know why, but I flew into a rage with him this afternoon about nothing, and he never answered me a word, but stood there listening—­why, Uncle Bob, he stood there like—­like a—­a gentleman—­till I got through, and then he turned away—­he never did say anything, and I was so sorry and ashamed that I nearly died.  I don’t know what to do now—­and he won’t come back, Uncle Bob—­I know he won’t.”