I took her by the shoulder, and spoke to her so sternly that I startled her.

"You are not to talk in that way anymore, Kathie," I said. "I am fond of you and I am fond of baby; but if baby were big enough and talked this silly way about you, do you suppose I would allow it? Sit up and stop crying."

I have always been careful not to hurt her feelings; perhaps I have been too careful. She sat up now, and then rose to her feet in a dazed sort of way. I determined to see if anything was to be made out of her mood.

"Kathie," said I, "how much of that performance yesterday was real, and how much was humbug? Tell me the truth."

She grew a little paler and her eyes dilated. I looked her straight in the face, half minded to force her if need be to give me some guidance in what I should do.

"I really meant to drown myself," she answered solemnly, "only when I saw the water and thought of h.e.l.l I was afraid."

She stopped, and I encouraged her to go on.

"I saw Mr. Weston, and I was scared of him and--and everything, and so I jumped in."

I reflected that very likely the child was more of a puzzle to herself than she was to me, and in any case I had more important ends to gain than the satisfying of my curiosity, so I asked her as gently as I could if she really believed she would be eternally lost if she killed herself.

"Oh, yes, Miss Ruth!" she cried with feverish eagerness.

"Then why do you do it?" I went on. "How do you dare to do it?"

She looked at me with a growing wildness in her face that was certainly genuine.

"I'm lost, anyway," she burst out. "I know I have been too wicked for G.o.d to forgive me. I have committed murder in my heart, and I know I was never meant to be saved."

"Stop!" I commanded her. "You are a little, foolish girl, too young even to know what you are talking about. How dare you decide what G.o.d will do?"

She regarded me with a look of stupefaction as if I were a stranger whom she had never seen; and indeed I can well believe I seemed one. Then the perversity of her mind came back to the constant idea.

"That's just it," she declared. "That's just my wickedness."

After this I refused to go into the subject any further. I got up and asked her if I should find her father at home. She begged me not to go to see him, and then said with an air of relief that he had gone out to Connecticut Mills to visit a sick woman. I did not stay with her longer.

I said I must go into the house, and as she refused to come, I left her, a forlorn little figure, there among the roses, and went in. It seemed hard to do it, but I had made up my mind she had better not indulge in any more talk this morning.

August 22. Cousin Mehitable, in a letter which came this morning, pities me because of my colorless existence; but I begin to feel that life is becoming too lurid. I have to-day bearded--no, Mr. Thurston hasn't any beard; but I have had my interview with him, and I feel as if I had been leading a cavalry charge up a hill in the face of a battery of whatever kind of guns are most disconcertingly destructive.

I am somewhat confused about the beginning of our talk. I got so excited later that the tame beginnings have slipped away; but I know I said I had come to make a proposition about Kathie, and somehow I led up to the child's mad performance the other day. I showed him the note and told him the story, but not until I had made him promise not to mention the matter to the child. When he had finished he was as pale as my handkerchief, his thin, bloodless face positively withered with pain.

"I cannot keep silence about this," he said when I had finished. "I must withdraw my promise, Miss Privet. My Kathie's soul is in danger."

I am sure that I am not ill-tempered, but over Kathie and her father I find myself in a state of exasperation which threatens to destroy all my claims to be considered a sane and temperate body. I had to struggle mightily to keep myself in hand this morning, but at first, at least, I succeeded.

"Mr. Thurston," I said, "I cannot release you. I should never have told you except on your promise, and you cannot honestly break it. Now listen to me. I have no right to dictate, but I cannot stand by and see dear little Kathie going to ruin. I am sure I know what is good for her just now better than you do. She is a good child, only she has gone nearly wild brooding over theologic questions she should never have heard of until she was old enough to judge them more reasonably."

He tried to interrupt me, but I put up my hand to stop him, and went on.

"You know how nervous and high-strung she is, and you cannot think her capable of looking fairly at the awful mysteries with which a creed deals."

"But I have only instructed her in those things on which her eternal salvation depends," he broke in.

"Her eternal salvation does not depend on her being driven into a madhouse or made to drown herself," I retorted, feeling as if I were brutal, but that it couldn't be helped. "The truth is, Mr. Thurston, you have been offering up Kathie as a sacrifice to your creed just as the fathers and mothers of old made their children pa.s.s through the fires to Moloch." He gasped, and some thin blood rushed to his face, but I did not stop. "I have no doubt they were conscientious, just as you are; but that didn't make it any better for the children. You have been entirely conscientious in torturing Kathie, but you have been torturing her."

His face was positively gray, and there was a look of anguish in his eyes which made me weak. It would have been so much easier to go on if he had been angry.

"You don't understand," he said brokenly. "You think all religion is a delusion, so of course you can't see. You think I don't love my child, and that I am so wrapped up in my creed I can't see she suffers. You won't believe it hurts me more than it does her."

"Do you think then," I asked him, doing my best to keep back the tears, "that it can give any pleasure to a kind Heavenly Father? I do understand. You have been so afraid of not doing your duty to Kathie you have brought her almost to madness, almost"--

"Don't! Don't!" he interrupted, putting out his hand as if I had struck him. "Oh, Miss Privet, if she had"--

I saw the real affection and feeling of the man as I have never realized them. I had been hard, and perhaps cruel, but it was necessary to save Kathie. I spoke now as gently as I could.

"No matter for the things that didn't happen, Mr. Thurston. She is safe and sound."

"But she meant to do it," he returned in a tone so low I could hardly catch the words.

"Meant?" I repeated. "She isn't in a condition to mean anything. She was distraught by brooding over things that at her age she should never even have heard of. I beg your pardon, Mr. Thurston, but doesn't what has happened prove she is too high-strung to be troubled with theology yet?

I am not of your creed, but I respect your feeling about it. Only you must see that to thrust these things on Kathie means madness and despair"--

"But she might die," he broke in. "She might die without having made her peace with her Maker, and be lost forever."

There was anguish in his face, and I know he meant it from the bottom of his heart; but in his voice was the trace of conventional repet.i.tion of phrases which made it possible for me to be overcome by exasperation. I looked at him in that mingled fury of impatience and pa.s.sionate conviction of my ground which must have been the state of the prophets of old when the spirit of prophecy descended upon them. I realize now that to have the spirit of prophecy it is necessary to lose the temper to a degree not altogether commendable in ordinary circ.u.mstances. I blazed out on that poor, thin-blooded, dejected, weak-minded, loving Methodist minister, and told him he insulted the G.o.d he worshiped; I said he had better consider the text "I will have mercy and not sacrifice;" I flung two or three other texts at him while he stood dazed with astonishment; I flamed at him like a burning-bush become feminine flesh; and fortunately he did not remember that even the Old Nick is credited with being able to cite Scripture for his purposes. I think the texts subdued him, so that it is well Father brought me up to know the Bible. At least I reduced Mr. Thurston to a state where he was as clay in the hands of the potter.

Then I presented to his consideration my scheme to send Kathie away to boarding-school for a year. I told him he was at liberty to select the school, if only it was one where she would not be too much troubled about theology. Of course I knew it would be hopeless to think of her going to a school entirely unsectarian, but I have already begun to make inquiries about the relative reasonableness of Methodist schools, and I think we may find something that will do. To put the child into surroundings entirely new, where her mind will be taken away from herself, and where a consciousness of the keenly discerning eyes of girls of her own age will keep her theatrical tendencies in check, should work wonders. I made Mr. Thurston give his consent, and before I left the house I saw Mrs. Thurston. I told her not to trouble about Kathie's outfit, and so I hope that bother is pretty well straightened out for the present.

August 24. George has taken a violent cold from his ducking, and is confined to the house. I hope that it is nothing serious. It is especially awkward now, for Mr. Longworthy is coming over from Franklin in a day or two to go over his accounts as trustee.

Kathie came over this morning while I was at breakfast, and tapped on the dining-room window. She was positively shining with happiness. I never saw a child so transformed.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she cried out, as soon as I turned, "oh, won't you come out here? I do so want to kiss you!"

I asked her to come inside, but she said she had promised not to, and rather than to get into a discussion I went out to her. She ran dancing up to me, fairly quivering with excitement.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she said, "it is too good to be true! You are the most loveliest lady that ever lived! Oh, I am so happy!"

I had to laugh at her demonstrativeness, but it was touching to see her.

She was no more like the morbid, hollow-eyed girl she had been than if she had never had a trouble. It is wonderful that out of the family of a Methodist parson should come a nature so exotic, but after all, the spiritual raptures and excesses which have worn Mr. Thurston as thin as a leaf in December must have their root in a temperament of keenly emotional extremes.

"I always wanted to go to boarding-school," Kathie went on, possessing herself of my hand, and covering it with kisses; "but Mother always said we couldn't afford it. Now I am going. Oh, I shall have such a beautiful time!"

I laughed at her enthusiasm, but I tried to moderate her extravagance a little by telling her that at boarding-school she would have to work, and to live by rule, so that she must give up her wild ways.

"Oh, I'll work," she responded, her ardor undampened. "I'll be the best girl you ever heard of. I beg your pardon for everything I've done, and I'll never do anything bad again."

This penitence seemed to me rather too general to amount to much, but that she was so much pleased was after all the chief thing, so I made no allusion to particular shortcomings, I did not even urge her to come into the house, for I felt this was a point for her to work out in her own mind. We walked in the dewy garden, discussing the preparations for her leaving home, and it was droll and pathetic to find how poverty had bred in her fantastic little pate a certain sort of shrewdness. She said in the most matter-of-fact way that it would be nice for her father to have one less mouth to fill, and that she supposed her smaller sisters could have her old clothes. I confess she did not in talking exhibit any great generosity of mind, but perhaps it was not to be expected of a child dazzled by the prospect of having a dream come true, and of actually being blessed with more than one new frock at a time. I am not clear what the result of sending her among strangers will be, and I see that a good deal of care will be necessary in choosing the school. I do believe good must come of it, however; and at least we are doing the best we can.