Her eyes filled. "Oh, it is so wonderful, that you go on loving me, David!" "You go on loving me," he rallied her; "in spite of my dullness and slowness, and all that." But Elizabeth was not listening. "Sometimes it frightens me to get so angry," she said, with a somber look. "It was just the same when I was a little girl; do you remember the time I cut off my hair? I think you had hurt my feelings; I forget now what you had done. I was always having my feelings hurt! Of course I was awfully silly. It was a relief then to spoil my body, by cutting off my hair. This afternoon it was a relief to put mud on my soul." He looked at her, trying to find words tender enough to heal the wounds she had torn in her own heart; not finding them, he was silent. "Oh, we must face it," she said; "_you_ must face it. I am not a good girl; I am not the kind of girl you ought to marry, I'm perfectly sure your mother thinks so. She thinks a person with a temper can't love people." "I'll not go away in March!" David interrupted her passionately;--of course it might be pleasanter for Materna to get away from old Ferguson; but what is a man's mother, compared with his girl! Elizabeth's pain was intolerable to him. "I won't leave you a day before I have to!" For a moment her wet eyes smiled. "Indeed you shall; I may be wicked--oh, I am! but I am not really an idiot. Only, David, _don't_ take things so for granted, dear; and don't be so awfully sensible, David." CHAPTER XIV When the door closed behind Blair and Elizabeth, Nannie set out to do that "best," which her brother had demanded of her. She went at once into the dining-room; but before she could speak, her stepmother called out to her: "Here! Nannie! You are just the person I want--Watson's late again, and I'm in a hurry. Just take these letters and sign them 'S. Maitland per N. M.' They must be posted before five. Sit down there at the table." Nannie could not sign letters and talk at the same time. She got pen and ink and began to write her stepmother's name, over and over, slowly, like a little careful machine: "S. Maitland," "S. Maitland." In her desire to please she discarded her own neat script, and reproduced with surprising exactness the rough signature which she knew so well. But all the while her anxious thoughts were with her brother. She wished he had not rushed off with Elizabeth. If he had only come himself into the detested dining-room, his mother would have bidden him sign the letters; he might have read them and talked them over with her, and that would have pleased her. Nannie herself had no ambition to read them; her eye caught occasional phrases: "Shears for--," "new converter," etc., etc. The words meant nothing to Nannie, bending her blond head and writing like a machine, "S. Maitland," "S. Maitland," ... "Mamma," she began, dipping her pen into the ink, "Blair has bought a rather expensive--"