“My father _hates_ me,” contradicted Mignon savagely. “If he really cared for me he could never send me away to be a prisoner in a convent school. Yes, I am going to leave home, and you nor anyone else shall stop me. Everybody hates me and I hate everybody!” The last word ended in a passionate sob of mingled rage and humiliation. Mignon was now tasting the bitterness of one against whom the world has turned.
“Poor Mignon.” Moved by sincere pity, Marjorie laid a comforting hand on the would-be refugee’s arm.
That gentle expression of sympathy, accompanied by the tender little caress, stirred into life an emotion hitherto unknown to Mignon’s rebellious soul. Assailing her as a climax to the strain of the past few days, it completely unnerved her. Her self-control vanishing she dropped her suitcase and burst into wild weeping. Winding her arms about the sobbing girl, Marjorie tried to soothe her as best she might. Fortunately for them, no passer-by intruded upon the little scene. Only the complaining rain lent its monotonous accompaniment to Mignon’s sobs.
“Let us go back to your house, Mignon,” proposed Marjorie practically with a view toward bracing up the weeper. “Someone is likely to come along and see us. You will go, won’t you?”
“All right.” Making an effort to speak with the utmost cheerfulness, Marjorie loosed her hold on Mignon and picked up the suitcase. “I’ll carry it,” she said. “It’s only a little way to your home. But first, I must stop at that little house over there and tell Captain to wait for me longer. I’d like to have a talk with you and you know I am to see your father. Is he at home?”
“Yes. In the library. I left the house by the back entrance so that he wouldn’t see me. I hid my suitcase outside,” confessed Mignon in a low, shamed voice. “I was going to New York to see Rowena. She promised to help me get on the stage. Her uncle is a theatrical manager.”
“I’m glad you have changed your mind,” was the hearty assertion. Marjorie was thinking that she was not in the least surprised to learn that Rowena Farnham was at the root of Mignon’s flight.
“I would never have hidden the money if it hadn’t been for her,” Mignon continued bitterly. “Still, it’s my fault, after all. I shouldn’t have listened to her. But this is the end. I’m going to be different, even if my father sends me away to school. I guess I started wrong and somehow could never do right. I deserve to be punished, though. It just breaks my heart when I think of not graduating from Sanford High.”