ugging her own, "I don't want
to lean on anybody's shoulder. I want to hold my head up straight, all
by itself. Do you then admire limp women, dear uncle, whose heads roll
about all loose till a good man comes along and props them up?"

"These are English ideas. I like them not," said Uncle Joachim, looking
stony.

Anna sat down on the seat by his side, and laid her cheek for a moment
against his sleeve. "This is the only good man's shoulder it will ever
lean on," she said. "If I were a preacher, do you know what I would
preach?"

"Thou art not, and never wilt be, a preacher."

"But if I were? Do you know what I would preach? Early and late? In
season and out of it?"

"Much nonsense, I doubt not."

"I would preach independence. Only that. Always that. They would be
sermons for women only; and they would be warnings against props."

She sat up and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, but he
continued to stare stonily into space.

"I would thump the cushions, and cry out, 'Be independent, independent,
independent! Don't talk so much, and do more. Go your own way, and let
your neighbour go his. Don't meddle with other people when you have all
your own work cut out for you being good yourself. Shake off all the
props----'"

"Anna, thou art talking folly."

"'--shake them off, the props tradition and authority offer you, and go
alone--crawl, stumble, stagger, but go alone. You won't learn to walk
without tumbles, and knocks, and bruises, but you'll never learn to walk
at all so long as there are props.' Oh," she said fervently, casting up
her eyes, "there is nothing, nothing like getting rid of one's props!"

"I never yet," observed Uncle Joachim, in his turn casting up his eyes,
"saw a girl who so greatly needs the guidance of a good man. Hast thou
never loved, then?" he added, turning on her suddenly.

"Yes," replied Anna promptly. If Uncle Joachim chose to ask such direct
questions she would give him straight answers.

"But----?"

"He went away and married somebody else. I had no money, and she had a
great deal. So you see he was a very sensible young man." And she
laughed, for she had long ago ceased to be anything but amused by the
remembrance of her one excursion into the rocky regions of love.

"That," said Uncle Joachim, "was not true love."

"Oh, but it was."

"Nay. One does not laugh at love."

"It was all I had, anyhow. There isn't any more left. It was very bad
while it lasted, an