We could advise Father and Mother Beck----"
"Let's follow a famous example, and 'wait and see'--if only for the
girl's sake."
"Oh, you think so well of her!"
"Not well, exactly," Brian hesitated. "I don't know what to think of her
yet. But--I think _about_ her. I feel her, as I feel electricity before
a thunderstorm bursts."
"A thunderstorm expresses her!" I laughed. "I thought of that myself.
She's sullen--brooding, dark as a cloud. Yet the _tiniest_ thing! One
could almost break her in two."
"I held out my hand for good-night," Brian said. "She had to give hers,
though I'm sure for some reason she didn't want to. It was small
and--crushable, like a child's; and hot, as if she had fever."
"She didn't want to take yours, because we're North of Ireland and she's
a fierce Sinn Feiner," I explained. Luckily Brian did not ask how I'd
picked up this piece of information! He was delighted with it, and
chuckled. "So she's a Sinn Feiner! She's very pretty, isn't she?"
"In a cross-patch way. She looks ready to bite at a touch."
"Poor child! Life must have gone hard with her. She's probably got a
grouch, as the American boys over here say. We must try and do something
to soften her down, and make her see things through rosier spectacles,
if she and her brother join on to our party for a while."
"Ye-es."
"You don't like her, Molly?"
"Oh, I've hardly thought of her, dear. But you seem to have made up for
that.
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