Meanwhile things were in a commotion at the Red Court Farm. On the departure of Miss Derode at Christmas the justice had put his daughter to school, an eligible place eight miles only away. She had gone rebelliously; stayed rebelliously; and now finished up by running home again. As the justice found when he got home. Mary Anne flatly refused to go back. She refused altogether to leave home. Mr. Thornycroft, privately not knowing in the least what to do with his self-willed daughter, sat in his magisterial chair, the young lady carpeted before him. All he could say, and he said a great deal, did not move her in the least; back to school she would not go. It seemed that she had resumed at once old habits; had fed her birds, sang her songs to the grand piano, danced gleefully in and out amid the servants, and finally put on a most charming silk dress of delicate colour, that she would never have been permitted to wear at school, and was too good to have been taken there. "I shall drive you back in an hour, Mary Anne." "I will not go, papa." "What's that, girl? Do you mean to tell me to my face you will not go when I say you shall? That's something new." "Of course if you make me get into the carriage and drive me there yourself, I cannot help it; but I should ran away again tomorrow." "It is enough disgrace to you to have run away once." Mary Anne stood, half in contrition, half in defiance. Nearly seventeen now, tall and fair, very handsome, she scarcely looked one to be coerced to this step. Her clear blue eyes met those of her father; the very self-same eyes as his, the self-same will in them. "As to disgrace, papa, I did nothing more than come straight home. It was the same thing as a morning walk, and I have often gone out for _that_." "What do you suppose is to become of you?" questioned Mr. Thornycroft, the conviction seating itself within him that she would not be forced from home again. He ran away from school himself, and his father had never been able to get him back to it. Mary Anne had inherited his self-will. "I can learn at home. Oh, papa, I will be very good and obedient if you let me stay." "You are too old now to be at home alone. And you would not obey mademoiselle, you know." "If you had wanted to place me at school, you should have done it when I was young, papa. I am too old to be sent there now, for the first time." Inwardly the justice acknowledged the truth of this. He began thinking that he must keep her, and engage some strict governess. But he did not want to do this; he objected to having governesses at the Red Court Farm. "You don't believe me perhaps, papa. Indeed, I will be good and obedient; but you must not send me away!" He supposed it must be so. He did not see his way clearly out of the dilemma; she had been indulged always, she must be indulged still. Some signs of relenting in the blue eyes--handsome still as his daughter's--Mary Anne saw it, and flew into his arms with a shower of tears.