"Good afternoon, Mr. Marley," the judge replied. He watched Marley go down the walk and out of the gate.
Judge Blair turned and saw Lavinia standing in the wide front door. Her face was red, her eyes were flashing, her arms hung straight and tense at her sides.
"Oh!" she cried, rigidly clenching her little fists. "What have you done! You have sent him away!"
Lavinia moved toward him, halting each moment, then taking a few nervous steps forward. At last she stood before him, challenging, defiant.
"Sit down, Lavinia, and listen," implored the judge.
"You have sent him away!" she repeated. "You were harsh and cruel and unkind to him!"
"Lavinia!" cried the judge, flushing with the anger parents call by different names. There was now a peremptory quality in his tone. But the girl did not heed him.
"Oh, how could you!" she went on, "how could you! Think how you must have wounded him! You not only reproached him with being poor, but you discouraged him as to his prospects! Do you think I cared for that? Do you think I couldn't have waited? Do you think I can't wait anyhow? What had you when you proposed to mama? You were poor--you had no prospects; you had no more right--"
"Lavinia! Lavinia!" the judge commanded, grasping the arms of his chair in an effort to rise. "You are beside yourself! You don't know what you are saying!"
"And you pretended to be doing it all for my happiness, too! Oh! oh! oh!" Her anger vented itself impotently in these exclamations, and then her mother, white and alarmed, appeared in the doorway behind her.
The girl trembled violently, then whirled about, pressed her hands to her face, and ran in, brushing by her mother in the doorway. Mrs. Blair glanced after her irresolutely. Then she went to her husband.
The judge sank back in his chair and looked at her in amazement.
"What has happened?" She drew the empty chair up and sat down in it. She leaned forward and took one of his hands, and pressed it between both of her own. She waited for the judge to speak.
"I hardly know," he began. "I never heard Lavinia break out so."
"You must remember how excited and overwrought she is," Mrs. Blair exclaimed. "You must make allowances."
"I didn't know the girl had such spirit," he continued.