not turn his back.

"I can't leave you now," he said; and she knew that he saw it from her
side at last.

"Why not?"

"Because the whole thing's altered! I'm not going to leave you with a man
like that!"

So Pocket, without a moment's thought either for her immediate feelings or
the ultimate consequences to himself; and yet with an unconscious air of
sacrifice more wounding than his actual words. She would have flung open
the door, and ordered him out, but he got his back to it first. So her
big eyes blazed at him instead.

"You're very kind!" she cried. "But suppose I don't believe a word you say
against my uncle behind his back?"

"I shall wait and say it to his face. That's another reason for waiting."

"Do you think you're the person to judge him--a boy like you?"

"I don't say I am. I only say that print----"

"How do you know he took the negative?"

"I don't, but----"

"But you jump to conclusions like a baby!" cried the girl, too quick for
him in following up a confusing advantage. "I never heard anybody like
you for flying from one wild notion to another; first you say he must have
made you fire, though you own you were walking in your sleep with a loaded
revolver, and then you're sure you never fired at all, simply because you
find the revolver fully loaded after days and days! Then you find a
photograph that needn't necessarily be what we thought it, that my uncle
needn't have taken even if it was; but you jump to another conclusion
about him, and you dare to speak of him to me as though you knew every
horrid thing you chose to think! As if you knew him and I didn't! As if
he hasn't been kind and good to me for years and years--and kind to you--far
too kind----"

The strained voice broke, tears were running down her face, and in it and
them there was more sincerity. Grief, and not anger, was the well of
those bitter tears. And it was in simple supplication, not imperiously
any more, that she pointed to the door when speech failed her. The boy's
answer was to go close up to her instead. "Will you come with me?" he
asked hoarsely.

She shook her head; she was past surprise as well as indignation; she
could only shake her head.

"My people would be as good to you as ever he was," urged Pocket
extravagantly. "They'd understand, and you'd stay with us, Phillida! You
might live with us altogether!"

She smiled very faintly at that.

"Oh, Phillida, can't you see that they'd do anythi