mildness.
"This tearing around the country on horseback," he said. "Going off all day hunting with this man and that—and spending the night in native cabins. As long as I considered you were here on a visit I said nothing—"
"Oh, didn't you!" murmured Colina sarcastically.
"—But if you are going to make this country your home, you must consider your reputation in the community just the same as anywhere else—more, indeed; we live in a tiny little world here, where our smallest actions are scrutinized and discussed."
He took a swallow of coffee. Colina played with her food sulkily.
Her silence encouraged him to proceed: "Another thing," he said with a deprecating smile, "comparatively speaking, I occupy an exalted position now. I am the head of all things, such as they are. Great or small this entails certain obligations on a man. I have to study all my words and acts.
"If you are going to stay here with me I shall expect you to assume your share; to consider my interests, to support me; to play the game as they say. What I object to is your impulsiveness, your outspokenness with the people. Remember, everybody here is your dependent. It is always a mistake to be open and frank with dependents. They don't understand it, and if they do, they presume upon it.
"Be guided by my experience; no one could justly accuse me of any lack of affability or friendliness in dealing with the people here—but they never know what I am thinking of!"
"Admirable!" murmured Colina, "but I'm not a directors' meeting!"
"Colina!" said her father indignantly.
"It's not fair for you to drag that in about my standing by you and supporting you!" she went on warmly. "You know I'll do that as long as I live! But I must be allowed to do it in my own way. I'm an adult and an individual. I differ from you. I've a right to differ from you. It is because these people are my inferiors that I can afford to be perfectly natural with them. As for their presuming on it, you needn't fear! I know how to take care of that!"
"A little more reserve," murmured her father.
Colina paused and looked at him levelly. "Dad, what a fool you are about me!" she said coolly.
"Colina!" he cried again, and pounded the table.
She met his indignant glance squarely.
"I mean it," she said. "I'm your daughter, am I not?—and mother's? You must know yourself by this time; you must have known mother—you ought to understand me a little but you won't try—you're clever enough in everything else! You've made up an idea for yourself of what a daughter ought to be, and you're always trying to make me fit it!"
Gaviller scarcely listened to this. "I'll have to bring in a chaperon for you!" he cried.
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Colina. "Anything but that! What do you want me to do?"
"Merely to live like other girls," said Gaviller; "to observe the proprieties."
"That's why I couldn't get along at school," muttered Colina gloomily.
"You might as well send me back."
"You're simply headstrong!" said her father severely. "You won't try to be different."
"Dad," said Colina suddenly, "what did you come north for in the first place, thirty years ago?"
The question caught him a little off his guard. "A natural love of adventure, I suppose," he said carelessly.
"Perfectly natural!" said Colina. "Was your father pleased?"
Gaviller began to see her drift. "No!" he said testily.
"And when you went back for her," Colina persisted, "didn't my mother run away north with you, against the wishes of her parents?"
"Your mother was a saint!" cried Gaviller indignantly.
"Certainly," said Colina coolly, "but not the psalm-singing kind. What do you expect of the child of such a couple?"
"Not another word!" cried Gaviller, banging the table—last refuge of outraged fathers.
Colina was unimpressed. "Now you're simply raising a dust to conceal the issue," she said relentlessly.
Gaviller chewed his mustache in offended silence.
Colina did not spare him. "Do you think you can make your child and hers into a prim miss, to sit at home and work embroidery?" she demanded. "Upon my word, if I were a boy I believe you'd suggest putting me in a bank!"
John Gaviller helped himself to another egg with great dignity and removed the top. "Don't be absurd, Colina," he said with a weary air.
It was a transparent assumption. Colina saw that she had reduced him utterly. She smiled winningly. "Dad, if you'd only let me be myself! We could be such pals if you wouldn't try to play the heavy father!"
"Is it being yourself to act like a harum-scarum tomboy?" inquired
Gaviller sarcastically.
Colina laughed. "Yes!" she said boldly. "If that's what you want to call it? There's something in me," she went on seriously. "I don't know what it is—some wild strain; something that drives me headlong; makes me see red when I am balked! Maybe it is just too much physical energy.
"Well, if you let me work it off it does no harm. If I can ride all day, or paddle or swim, or go hunting with Michel or one of the others; and be interested in what I'm doing, and come home tired and sleep without dreaming—why everything is all right. But if you insist on cooping me up!—well, I'm likely to turn out something worse than harum-scarum, that's all!"
Gaviller flung up his arms.
"Really, you'll have to go back to your aunt," he said grimly. "The responsibility of looking after you is too great!"
Colina laughed out of sheer vexation. "The silly ideas fathers have!" she cried. "Nobody can look after me, not you, not my aunt, nobody but myself! Why won't you understand that! I don't know exactly what dangers you fancy are threatening me. If it is from men, be at ease! I can put the fear of God into them! It is the sweet and gentle girl you would like to have that is in danger there!"
"I'm afraid you'll have to go back," said Gaviller.
Colina drew her beautiful straight brows together. "You make me think you simply want to get me off your hands," she said sullenly.
Gaviller shook his head. "You know I love to have you with me," he said simply.
"Then consider me a fixture!" said Colina serenely. "This is my country!" she went on enthusiastically. "It suits me. I like its uglinesses and its hardships, too! I hated it in the city. Do you know what they called me?—the wild Highlander!
"Up here everybody understands my wildness, and thinks none the worse of me. It was different in the city—you've always lived in the north, you old innocent—you don't know! Men, for instance, in society they have a curious logic. They seem to think if a girl is natural she must be bad! Sometimes they acted on that assumption—"
"What did I tell you!" cried her father. "Men are the same everywhere!"
"Well," said Colina, smiling to herself, "they didn't get very far. And no man ever tried it twice. Up here—how different. I don't have to think of such things."
"I have to think of settling you in life," said Gaviller gloomily.
"There is no one for you up here."
"I'm not bothering my head about that," said Colina. She went on with a kind of splendid insolence: "Every man wants me. I'll choose one when I'm ready. I can't see anything in men except as comrades. The decent ones are timid with women, and the bold ones are—well—rather beastly. I'm looking for a man who's brave and decent, too. If there's no such thing—"
She rose from the table. Colina's was a body designed to fill a riding-habit, and she wore one from morning till night.