smoking before the fire in the big, clean, bare, living-room, permitted
himself one reckless defiance:

"Not wanted!" Long Jean made the most of this.

"And his pretty wife at the point of death," she gossiped to Mrs. McAdam
of the White Fish Lodge; "and there is this to say about the child being
a girl: the lure of the States can't touch her, and Nathaniel may have
some one to turn to for care and what not when infirmity overtakes him.
Besides, the lass may be destined for the doing of big things; those
witchy brats often are."

"The lure don't get all the boys," muttered Mary McAdam, cautiously
thinking of her Sandy, aged five, and Tom, a bit older.

"All as amounts to much," Long Jean returned.

And in her heart of hearts Mary McAdam knew this to be true. The time
would come to her, as it had to all Kenmore mothers, when she would have
to acknowledge that by the power of the "lure" were her boys to be
tested.

But Priscilla at Lonely Farm showed a hardened disregard of her state.
She persisted and grew sturdy and lovely in defiance of tradition and
conditions. She was as keen-witted and original as she was independent
and charming. Still Theodora took long before she capitulated, and
Nathaniel never succumbed. Indeed, as years passed he grew to fear and
dislike his young daughter. The little creature, in some subtle way,
seemed to have "found him out"; she became, though he would not admit it,
a materialized conscience to him. She made him doubt himself; she laughed