THE STEADFAST HEART
predicting what she would say or do in any circumstances. At times, under the greatest provocation, she would remain sweet and smiling and gentle; again, without discoverable cause, she would produce what Mary called a “tantrum.” If you expected her to be haughty, she would be complaisant; if you hoped she would be deferential, she was likely to flout…. The trouble with Lydia was that she was honest with every minute, looking neither to the one which had just sped nor the one which was about to arrive…. What the immediate present demanded of her impulse—that it received.
“She ought to be home from school,” said Mary, with maternal anxiety.
“She is,” said Craig. “She can be viewed in the act of perusing the paper on the front porch—and I take it for a bad sign.”
“That’s queer. Usually she never looks at the paper.”
“That,” said Craig, “is the bad sign. If she has taken it into her head to interest herself in Angus, Heaven help him…. But maybe, like the rest of Rainbow, she merely regards this issue as a side show.”
“She hasn’t evidenced the slightest interest in Angus.”
“Then you’d better take it she is very interested,” said Craig, and went out on to the
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