her—school-teachers, clerks in stores, a librarian—but without satisfaction, and her conscience was clear. She let herself enjoy the gentleness which the faded spinster brought with her, and the increased serenity of daily living, but she held herself sternly faithful to her father’s codes. The thing had seemed to arrange itself; “Miz-zada” was to come to her; they were predestined to live together.

And she had exactly the same feeling with regard[68] to her position in the mill. Sensing her one woman friend’s antagonism to Luke, in spite of her careful tact, she tried honestly to settle herself in other situations—a book shop, the little city’s one big department store, a tea room—but the hours, the work, the pay, the surroundings, left something always to be desired, and when Luke told her Mr. Carey would make a place for her at the mill she went gladly. That, too, apparently had been decided for her; she and Luke Manders were to work together. Her father, she felt sure, would be glad to have her there, among his mill people, studying them, befriending them, discovering ways to better conditions.

[68]

As for the association with Luke, she approached it steadily, but with a tiny inward quiver of curiosity. Luke had been wonderful in his attitude since Dr. Darrow’s death; never by look or word had he betrayed his knowledge of her father’s dying wish, or urged her compliance. He came seldom, especially after Miss Ada’s establishment as duenna, and when he came he said little, but there was hardly a waking hour when the girl was not aware of him—his bold beauty, his eagle gaze, his poise, the strength and depth of his silence. “Wait till you’re nineteen ... twenty ...” the doctor had said, “and no foolishness in the meantime ... no hand-holding ... no mooning ’round ...” and she had obeyed him. It[69] had been easy to obey him, with the fine austerity of Luke’s conduct. It was easy, still, in their close and constant companionship at the mill, for the young mountaineer never relaxed his vigilant curb upon himself. She was aware, however, that there was a curb; increasingly aware. On her nineteenth birthday she woke early to a riotous duet between a cardinal and a mocking bird on a bough beside her window, and they seemed, between them, to be giving rapturous expression to her morning meditations.

[69]

“Wait till you’re nineteen ... twenty....”

She was nineteen. She had waited. Need she wait any longer? Little as she had been about with boys and girls, few as were 

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