If I were about to be hanged it would be little comfort to me to be told that in a few hours I would be playing on harps, walking streets of gold and wearing wings. I didn't want to go away--that was the plain truth. I preferred Intelligence-Offices to boarding-schools; I preferred our big brown ugly old house, empty stable, out-of-date carriages, cruel twins, and uncuddleble Ruth to spreads, room-mates and house-parties. I wanted to stay at home! But I was bound that no one should know that my heart was breaking; I was determined that no one should guess that I was being sent away, boosted out of my position, like the poor old minister in the South Baptist church. I would go with my head up, and tearless! Only once did I give way, and that was in poor little Dixie's furry neck when I threw my arms about him in his stall. Poor little dumb Dixie! Poor pitiful dumb carriages gazing silently at me. "_You'll_ miss me. _You'll_ be sorry," I said. On that last grey Sunday afternoon I took my good-bye walk, through Buxton's woods back of our house. I gazed for the last time on the precious landmarks that I had grown to love--the two freak chestnut trees, soldered into one like the Siamese twins; the hollow oak where we used to dig the rich dark brown peet and find the big, slimy white worms; the huge fallen pine, struck once by lightning, along whose trunk and in among whose dead branches we used to play "ship" and "pirate-boat." I walked alone--all alone. There was no romantic lover in riding clothes, as in my dreams, to share my sad reflections. Only a scurrying chipmunk or red squirrel, now and then, gazed at me with frightened eyes, then scampered away; only the dead leaves under my feet kept rhythm with my dragging steps. I was awfully lonely and unhappy. It seemed to me that even the sombre sky and the dead quietness of Sunday connived to add to my dreariness. When I reached our iron gate on my return, it was nearly dark. Dr. Maynard was just coming away from one of his frequent Sunday afternoons with Alec and I met him by the fountain. "Hello, little Wild-cat," he sang out cheerily. He always has called me Wild-cat, though I never knew why. "Back from one of your walks 'all by your lone'?" I think he copied that from Kipling. "Ears been burning? Al and I have just been talking about you." I had never as much as peeped in Dr. Maynard's presence before--he's fifteen years older than I--but I couldn't bear his interference in my affairs and I retorted, "I should advise you not to meddle with wild-cats, Dr. Maynard!" "Whew!" he whistled in mock alarm; and though it was not a pretty thing for a girl of seventeen to say to a man whose hair was beginning to turn grey, I finished hotly, "Or you'll get scratched!" and turned and dashed into the house. CHAPTER V