The Cricket Part 13

"I told her about my home, and my little sister, who is her age. She started off to find her," answered Ann, simply.

"Do you think it is a part of your duty to set her against her parents?"

"I have never discussed her parents with her."

"I'm sure Miss Barnes isn't to blame, Max," put in Wally.

"I think she is." Mrs. Bryce cut him off. "You may take the noon train to town to-morrow, Miss Barnes."

"Oh, I say, Max!" protested Wally.

"It's all right, Mr. Bryce," Ann said. "I hate to leave Isabelle, but what can I do to help her? She's just doomed!"

"Doomed to live with us, Wally," laughed Mrs. Bryce.

"Yes, doomed to live with you," the girl replied. "To get along without help, or love. To see her mother occasionally--a strange woman in the house. What right have you and your crowd to have children?" she demanded, hotly.

"Such impudence!" burst out Mrs. Bryce.

"I've never known any one like you before, and you fill me with horror!"

Ann retorted.

"This may amuse you, Wally, but it doesn't me," remarked Mrs. Bryce, walking out of the room.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bryce; I didn't mean to say all that. I am so tired and excited from hunting Isabelle, and it seemed so terrible to me that she didn't care about her own baby being lost, that I just burst out."

"I know how overstrained you are, but of course, under the circ.u.mstances you will see----" he answered miserably.

"Oh, I couldn't stay in the house another minute."

"Mrs. Bryce is very self-contained, she's not excitable as you and I are," he tried to explain.

"I hate to leave Isabelle. Oh, Mr. Bryce, try to look after her a little, try to love her a little, she does need it so!"

The next day as she stepped to the platform of the train the chauffeur handed her a letter from Wally. There was an enclosure of two hundred dollars, which he begged she would accept as a present from Isabelle.

He thanked her and regretted the necessity of her going.

So Ann pa.s.sed out of Isabelle's life, mourned and lamented for months by the child. She represented the only tenderness, the only understanding and sympathy that came into Isabelle's childhood. The little belated tendrils of affection she had put forth toward her world, under Ann's warm influence, shrivelled and died. Her wits against them all, that was the motto she decided upon, in the bitter wisdom of her four brief years.

CHAPTER SIX

During the years that followed many were the governesses set up by Mrs.

Bryce to be promptly knocked down, as it were, by Isabelle. They would either depart of their own accord, or they would be sent flying by the irate Mrs. Bryce after some escapade of her incorrigible offspring.

"She'll end in a reform school!" she remarked to Wally one day, upon the dismissal of the latest one.

He sought out his daughter and laboured with her.

"Look here, kid, how many governesses have you had lately?"

"Oodles of 'em."

"But what do you do to them?"

"Get rid of 'em, they're no good. Can't you get Max to let me have Ann again?"

"I'm afraid not."

"I won't have any of these she gets me--old snoops!"

"She does the best she can," Wally defended.

"She does not. She doesn't even look at 'em, just telephones for one to be sent out. Let's you and me go pick out another one, Wally."

"I'm sorry, but your mother won't stand for it. Ann gave her a piece of her mind before she left, and Max blames me for it."

"If she'd get Ann, I'd be so good she'd never have to change again."

"Why don't you tell her that?"

"I did. It makes her mad. You tell her, Wally."

"She gets mad at me, too."

"If you get mad back and yell at her, she stops. That's what I do," she advised him.

"Look here, it would be a lot more comfortable for you to put up with some woman, even if you don't like her. You always have to get used to a new one."

"I don't. They have to get used to me," the imp replied. "Where you going?" she added.

"I'm going to exercise Nero."

"Take me."

"Can't look after you and that horse, too."

"I'm not a baby," she scorned him. "Tell them to bring the pony round, Wally."

Later when she threw her breeched leg over her horse, and waited for Wally to mount, he exclaimed:

"Lord, I wish you'd been a boy!"

"So do I."