"Pshaw, Susan, you know you don't know anything about it!" bantered Frances.
"Don't, don't I? Well, I 'spec I knows sumpin' 'bout de time dey brought you home las' wintah laid out in a drag wid de blood all ober yo does an' dat cut right up dyar, right on de forehead; little more to de lef, an' yuh wou'dn't be standin' hyar; an' yo' hyar jes does hide de scar now. Tell yuh, honey," she went on solicitously, coming up close to Frances, "young gals cyarnt tek no chances wid de looks nohow, dat's a fac'! Don't go smash yo'self up!"
"There's the trap!" cried Frances, delighted to put an end to such forebodings. "Good-by; give father a nice breakfast!" and she went running out into the hall.
She opened the heavy outer door softly. The frosty air struck her like a blow. She looked over her shoulder. Susan was not watching her off. She ran back and swooped down on the black skin rug at the foot of the polished stair and flung it over her arm.
"Just like them to put a linen robe in the trap this morning! I would freeze."
She closed the big door quietly. Her father was asleep. Outside, the long corridor stretched deserted and dusky; the quadrangle was in heavy shadow; the white frost glittered on the grass, on the edge of the brick pavement to the corridor, and on the balcony rails running from house to house overhead; the scarlet and yellow leaves drifted from the maples; the young girl caught a whirl of them in her long skirt and carried them rustling in her train as she hurried along. Starlight was tied to the rail outside the quadrangle and she laughed as she saw the linen robe.
"I'm ahead of them this time!" she said to herself as she stood up and folded the great rug about her and turned up the fur collar of her coat and snapped the heavy driving-gloves on her wrists. The mountain air was cold at that hour, the tingle of it was in Starlight's blood as well as in his driver's. He gave a few friskings of balancing on his hind legs and pawing with the others wildly in air before he settled down to business. Frances, turning her head for fear Susan would see, had one swift gleam of the old darkey's wrinkled, anxious face at an upstairs window, watching her off, after all. She had only a glimpse, Starlight, his head tucked down far as his rein allowed, was tearing down the drive.