ng slowly.
"She's bright enough and knows much more about some things than most
girls her age--and nothing at all about others. What I want you to do is
to go easy; easy, that's it. I rather imagine she's always taken a lot
on her own shoulders and I don't believe she's ever thought much of
herself. If you can develop a little assertiveness in her--she'll need
it, here--"

"Yes. She'll need it here," echoed the tutor, because he thought he
ought to say something. He was a tall, lanky man whose shoulders sagged
as though something about them had broken under the strain of being
dignified; his face narrowed from an impressive dome of a forehead to a
straggling Van Dyke beard which he always stroked with the fingers of
his left hand. He was the old type of schoolmaster whom the rapid
forward stride of education had left far behind. His summons to Gray
Manor had come rather in the way of a life-saver and he did not intend
to allow the fact that the Forsyth heir had turned out to be a girl,
perturb him in the least. And so long as his rooms at the Manor were
comfortable, his food good and his salary certain, he could adapt
himself to any fool theory this lawyer guardian might care to advance.

Mr. Allendyce stared hard at the other, his face wrinkled in his effort
to say the right thing.

"Oh, let her have her head," he finished finally. And he liked that idea
so well that he repeated it. "Let her have her head. Do you understand
me? Never mind what's in the old schoolbooks. If she'd rather take a
walk than study Latin verbs, well, let her. I want her to be happy
here--happy, that's most important. You've heard of flowers that bloom
only in shelter and sunshine? This youngster isn't unlike--"

"Well, I never! No, I _never!... I never!_" Mrs. Budge's gasp, rising in
a crescendo, almost betrayed her presence. She gave a pillow a mighty
jab. As though it were not bad enough to bring the girl to the house in
the first place without paying a man a fancy price to teach her to have
her own way! "Flowers! Humph! Old fools--" Unable to endure another word
in silence she stalked off to her own quarters.

In the butler's pantry she found Beryl arranging real flowers in a
squatty Bristol glass bowl and humming gaily as she did so. Now Beryl
should have beep upstairs marking the new linen and she should not be
singing as though she owned the whole world. These two transgressions
and the sight of the bright blossoms in the girl's han