“Now, you listen here to me,” he said sternly. “Don’t you ever think you’re not good enough for those little washed-out blue bloods that wouldn’t come to your party! You’re too good, d’you hear? Too good! And I want you to let ’em see that you know you are, understand? My God, I don’t know what they ever did, these people down here, to feel so dressy about, except get beaten to a pulp! Your mother’s got her head full of sentimental slush--well, she’s a sick woman, but you’re a strong, hearty, sensible young one, and I want you to get this thing straight!” Brutally, competently, he bound up the bleeding wounds of her little pride, cauterizing them first with his own bitter, bracing philosophy of life. She was able to face her small, giggling world next day with dry eyes and an upheld chin, even--when the hotel child repeated her ditty of the day before--with an outthrust tongue. The thing, therefore, trivial in itself, had definite consequences. Young Glen Darrow stopped being her mother’s dear little girl and became her father’s boyish daughter. She no longer sought to be very nice to nice little girls in order that they might be nice to her; she strove, instead, and with marked success, to show all little girls that she did not like or heed or want them. The vivid hair, flaming about her small truculent face, was a red flag of defiance to all other children. CHAPTER II _Mrs. Darrow seeks further for gentility, and her daughter has her hair pulled and doesn’t mind it._ EFFIE DARROW died when Glen was twelve years old, quite suddenly and excitingly after long and uneventful years of invalidism. She became, so patently that even the child could sense, if she could not understand it, a person of importance once more in the eyes of her husband. For seven tense and high-keyed days and nights she interested him intensely, though he had never expected her to interest him again. If he could not summon a handsome grief at will, at least he could and did produce an earnest solicitude which satisfied her amply as long as she was conscious. His eyes blurred for an instant when he heard the dismal dropping of clay upon the coffin, but they brightened again at the thought that his child was now his indeed. Driving back from the cemetery in a soft, warm rain, he fired his first gun. “Glen, how’d you like to leave Miss Josephine’s and go to public school?” “I don’t care,” the girl answered, heavy-eyed. “All right, then--tell her you’re quitting. Suits me fine. Never did like that namby-pamby, cambric tea outfit up there!” He scowled savagely. “Go where you’re good as any and better than most--and they know it,--that’s my idea!” “I don’t care,” said the child again, her voice sodden with grief.