Luke Manders, for his part, regarded her with frank scorn. It was clearly displeasing to him to find the font of learning guarded by this faded vestal. He answered grudgingly and did himself small credit until the doctor took charge of the quizzing and began to exhibit his prowess with numbers. Then, like a dancer compelled by the lure of rhythm, he performed.

“Well, now, Miss Tenafee,” the doctor demanded, “what do you think about that? Pretty keen, huh? With no more chance— Keen, huh?”

[46]“Miz-zada” drew in her breath and a small quantity of dull color seeped into her sallow cheeks. “He is indeed—very—very—” she paused, visibly sorting her adjectives, choosing, rejecting.

[46]

“Well? Well?” the man prodded, impatiently.

The faded gentlewoman had found her word. “He is very sharp,” she said definitely.

“You’ve said it!” Darrow was not subtle himself and rarely detected subtlety in others. “Sharp as a lancet! Lemme tell you, this lad’s going to get ahead in the world.”

“I daresay,” Miss Ada conceded, her upper lip spelling faint distaste. “Glen, my dear—I have so many papers waiting for correction....” She half rose, but seated herself again at the doctor’s peremptory gesture, and discussed without enthusiasm the question of his grading.

It disappointed Glen to sense the dislike and distrust which her friends felt for each other. She had wanted “Miz-zada” to thrill over their golden legend, but the shabby teacher, pausing at the door, took a long, measuring look at the bold and beautiful young mountaineer and returned his frank scorn with a delicate, futile, birdlike antagonism which the girl found pathetically amusing.

[47]

CHAPTER V Dr. Darrow damns the first families with his last breath, and little Miss Nancy Carey meets the young mountaineer.

FROM the time she was fourteen—almost, indeed, from the moment of the first meeting, Glen Darrow knew that some day, when she was old enough, she would fall in love with Luke Manders.

She accepted this knowledge without excitement or self-consciousness, as simply as she accepted the other undebatable facts of her life and circumstances. It was just as 

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