Mark sought a convenient opportunity to interview Tibby. He found the girl one morning pacing slowly up and down the pathway leading to the horses’ corral, her riding-whip in her hand and riding-skirt upon her arm. She was smiling softly to herself and flipping the tops of the tall balsam weeds with her whip as she passed them. She looked up, a startled, challenging look in her large eyes as he approached her. “Well, Miss Tibby, what new mischief are you hatching to-day?” Mark asked as he joined her. “None, I assure you. I was only thinking how I would like to see a prairie on fire.” “I trust the wish has not been father to the act. You haven’t set a match to it?” “O, no! I haven’t yet looked up a convenient hiding-place for myself. And then I don’t believe I’m quite so bad as Nero. My desire to see a burning Rome is not strong enough to make me set it on fire.” “Indeed? You reassure me!” “As if that were necessary.” “You haven’t told me what you really think of us here, Miss Tibby.” “I think it is lovely here; you have so much breathing space.” “Is that all we are supposed to do—breathe?” “There doesn’t seem to be a chance for much else. Now does that sound impolite? I don’t mean it so.” Tibby flicked the toe of her boot with her whip, and drew in one of the deep corners of her mouth as if she had said something she ought not to. “Not in the least impolite. It’s a fact. We may exist here, not much else.” “But I didn’t mean that. I like it here very much. But one is so free from restraint, breathing seems the easiest and about the only necessary thing to do.” “You were country born?” “Yes, and I remember it seemed there as if I was repressed and confined and I looked yearningly out into the greater liberty of the world. Think of it! From the freedom of country I longed for liberty.” “And now?” Mark questioned. “And now I am not tired of the other life. O, no. I enjoy it truly, only I think part of the people one meets in society life are often very silly and flat, as—as—” she hesitated for a comparison, then gave the familiar one of her childhood,—“as dishwater.” “Isn’t that the trouble with a part of the people everywhere? After all, it’s a great thing to be to the manner born,” said Mark, setting his large hat farther back upon his head, and looking the bright sun in the face. “Ain’t it? There is an ease, a consciousness of power, a—a something which the very rich have which one may covet. Perhaps it is the consciousness of always being well-dressed. I think that was what I used to covet. As to birth, I had nothing to envy in any of them. My mother was a Devereaux, my great uncle an earl.” Tibby lifted her chin with conscious pride. Mark saw that the girl was still smarting from affronts received when she was only Mrs. Wylie’s servant.