Mrs. Green again looked over her spectacles. "They're mighty fine folk, the Ashendynes," she said at last. "They've got old blood and pride for a dozen, and the settest heads! Ain't nothin' daunts them, neither Satan nor the Lord. They're goin' to run their own race.--You're more like your mother, but I wouldn't say you didn't have something of your grandfather in you at times. You've got a dash of Coltsworth, too." "Haven't I anything of my father at all?" Mrs. Green, leaning forward into the sunlight, threaded her needle. "I wouldn't be bitter about my father, if I were you. People can be born without a sense of obligation and responsibility just as they can be born without other senses. I suppose it's there somewhere, only, so many other things are atop, it ain't hardly ever stirred. Your father's right rich in other things." "He's so poor he couldn't either truly love my mother or truly let her go.--But I didn't mean to talk about him," said Hagar. She laid the ball she had been winding in the basket with the other balls and stood up, stretching her young arms above her head. "Listen to the wind! I wish it would blow me away, neither north nor south nor east nor west!" "Yes, you are like your mother," said Mrs. Green. "Have you got to go? Then will you take your grandmother's big knitting-needles back to her for me? And don't you want a winesap?--there's a basket of them behind the door." CHAPTER XI THE LETTERS Miss Serena was playing "Silvery Waves." Hagar, kneeling on the hearth-rug, warmed her hands at the fire and studied the illuminated text over the mantel. "Silvery Waves" came to an end, and Miss Serena opened the green music-book at "Santa Anna's March." "Has Isham gone for the mail?" asked Hagar. "Yes. He went an hour ago.--You're hoping, I suppose, for a letter from that dreadful man?" "You know as well as I do," said Hagar, "that I gave my word and he gave his to write only once a month. And he isn't a dreadful man. He's just like everybody else." "Ha!" said Miss Serena, and brought her hands down upon the opening chord. Hagar, her elbows on her knees, hid her eyes in her hands. Within her consciousness Juliet was speaking as she had spoken that night upon the stage--spoken in the book--spoken in immortal life, youth, love. Not so, she knew with a suddenness and clangour as of a falling city, not so could Juliet have spoken! "Like everybody else"--Was Laydon, then, truly, like everybody else?--A horror of weakness and fickleness came over her. Was there something direfully wrong with her nature, or was it possible for people simply to be mistaken in such a matter? Her head grew tired; she was so unhappy that she wished to creep away and weep and weep.... Miss Serena, having marched with Santa Anna, turned a dozen pages and began "The Mocking Bird. With Variations."