“Fayte’s not going to be there—at first, anyhow. His father said he was sending him into Old Mexico—on business—he might not be back for nearly a year.” Uncle Hank put that by with a little wave of the hand. Fayte’s connection with the rustlers was understood by every man on the Sorrows; his father’s lame explanation that the boy had been deceived by the gang was accepted silently. This sending him off to Mexico till the talk blew over was the best Marchbanks could do. “I ain’t thinking about that feller,” Uncle Hank said. “You’d not make a friend of him—though in front of his folks you’d have to treat him nice. I trust you to handle that. You’re young, Pettie, but you’ve got good judgment. Just take what I’m saying as mostly a warning to any young person going out among strangers. Your way is paid over there. I wouldn’t take nothing for you as a gift from Marchbanks, though he wanted me to. I intended you should be free and independent, like your father’s daughter ought to be. Anything you don’t like—you can just pick up and come home.” Hilda’s hand went instinctively to her pocket. Uncle Hank talked a good deal like the letter there. “Oh, well,” she said, half bitterly, “if I’m such a child, Aunt Val must be right; you won’t need to talk to me about—about these things for years yet.” Hank could not remember when Hilda had ever spoken to him like that. He couldn’t know that she was answering Pearse’s letter, making her little stand of maiden dignity with Pearse. “Think so?” he asked gently. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Pettie. You’ll find yourself a grown-up young lady all of a sudden—and then maybe some of the things you have allowed to hang about will make trouble.” Hilda’s only answer was a sort of inarticulate sound. Presently the old man spoke again. “These here common working people marry very young, Pettie,” holding the slim wrist and tapping his own palm with her hand. “That’s natural, and right enough. You see how they live; there’s nothing to keep them from marriage. They don’t have to have education, like Charley Van Brunt’s daughter. I see now that I myself didn’t look at this thing right; seemed to me you was getting—or had got—pretty well all the learning you’d need—the reading of books and such to sort of fill out. I thought you felt that way, too, but the way you’ve took up with this idea of going over to the Marchbanks place shows me different.”