"Well, the road's clear--that's all I want to know! Gipsy--"
"Ralph, it's no use. I'm not going to listen."
"The family has planned this ever since we were infants. When you used to come to Hawk Nest with your big eyes and your blue gingham dress and your white stockings--I knew it somehow even then, even when I teased you so--"
"You certainly teased me. Do you remember the rain barrel?"
"No, I don't. The family has set its heart--"
"Oh, Ralph, family can be such a tyrant! At any rate, ours will have to take its heart off this."
Ralph turned sullen. "Well, the family used to settle it for women."
"Yes, it did--when you came over with William the Conqueror! Do you want to _take_ me, regardless--just as you'd take those millions? Well, you may take those millions, but you can't take me!"
"Your father wants it, too. The Colonel showed me a letter--"
Hagar stopped short--they were walking in the Park. "My father!... Do you think I owe my father so great a love and obedience?" She looked before her, steadily, down the vista of vast, leafless trees. "The strongest feeling," she said, "that I have about my father is one of strong curiosity."
The house was full, said the man at the ticket-window. Nothing to be had, short of almost the back row, under the gallery. Rachel shook her head, and her cousin, Willy Maine, leaving the window, expressed his indignation. "You ought to have told me this afternoon that you wanted to go! Anybody might have known"--Willy was from one of the sleepier villages in one of the sleepiest counties of his native state--"Anybody might have known that in New York you have to get your tickets early! Now we've missed the show!" By now they were out of the swinging doors and down upon the pavement. The night was bright and not especially cold. It was the Lyceum Theatre, and they stood at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street.
"It's too late to try anything else," pondered Rachel. "Willy, I'm sorry. But we truly didn't know we could go until the last minute, and I didn't believe it would be crowded."
"It's a beautiful night," said Hagar. "It's light and bright, and there are crowds of people. Why can't we just walk about until bedtime?"
Willy, who was nineteen but a young giant, pursed his lips. "Is it proper for ladies?"
