Only in quality did Eris differ from her brothers. It was her mind--and the untasted pleasures of the mind--that drove her to the common fount. There is a picture by Fragonard called “The Fountain of Love.” And, as eagerly as the blond and glowing girl speeds to the brimming basin where mischievous little winged Loves pour out for her the magic waters, so impetuously had Eris sped toward the fount of knowledge, hot, parched with desire to set her lips to immortal springs. * * * * * Odell’s heavy eyes, brooding anger, followed Mazie’s movements as she smoothed out the clothing and laid each garment in the trunk. “You don’t have to do that,” he growled. “Let her come and get ’em if she wants ’em.” “But she needs----” “Dang it, let ’em lay. Like’s not she’ll sicken o’ them pitcher people before the week’s out. She’ll get her belly full o’ notions. Let her caper till she runs into barbed wire. That’ll sting some sense into her hide.” “She only took her little leather bag, Elmer----” “She’ll sicken sooner. I ain’t worryin’ none. She ain’t a loose girl; she’s just a fool heifer that goes bucketin’ over a snake-fence where it’s half down. Let her kick up and skylark. You bet she’ll hear the farm bell when it comes supper time----” He turned away exasperated, but Mazie took him by the sleeve of his milking jacket: “She’s got to have money, Elmer----” “No, she hain’t! She’ll sicken the quicker----” “Elmer, it’s her money.” “’Tain’t. It’s mine.” “It’s her heifer-money----” “She shan’t have it! Not till she’s twenty-one. And that’s that!” Mazie looked at her husband in a distressed way, her black eyes full of tears: “Elmer, you can’t use a girl like a boy. A girl’s a tender thing. And I was afraid of this--something like this.... Because Eris is a mite different. She likes to read and study. She likes to figure out what she reads about. She likes music and statues and art-things like the hand-painted pictures we saw in Utica. There’s no harm in art, I guess.... And you know how she always did love to dress up for church plays--and how nicely she sang and danced and acted in school----” “Dang it all!” shouted Odell, beating one tanned fist within the other palm, “let her come home and cut her capers! She can do them things when there’s a entertainment down to the church, can’t she? “That’s enough for any girl, ain’t it? And she can go to Utica and look at them hand-painted pitchers in the store windows. And she can dance to socials and showers like sensible girls and she can sing her head off Sundays in church when she’s a mind to! “All she’s gotta do is come home and git the best of everything. But as long as she acts crazy and stays away, I’m done with her. And that’s that!” CHAPTER VII Spring had begun more than a month early. The young year promised agricultural miracles. All omens were favourable. Ed Lister predicted it would be a “hog-killin’.”