For the child, with all her wilfulness, her tempers
and her pride, made me, as she did all others, her willing slave.
Her lessons went on, brilliantly or not at all, according to her sweet
will. She learned to read with extraordinary rapidity, for she was eager
to know more of that great world of which The Duke had told her such
thrilling tales. Writing she abhorred. She had no one to write to. Why
should she cramp her fingers over these crooked little marks? But she
mastered with hardly a struggle the mysteries of figures, for she would
have to sell her cattle, and "dad doesn't know when they are cheating."
Her ideas of education were purely utilitarian, and what did not appear
immediately useful she refused to trifle with. And so all through the
following long winter she vexed my righteous soul with her wilfulness
and pride. An appeal to her father was idle. She would wind her long,
thin arms about his neck and let her waving red hair float over him
until the old man was quite helpless to exert authority. The Duke could
do most with her. To please him she would struggle with her crooked
letters for an hour at a time, but even his influence and authority had
its limits.
"Must I?" she said one day, in answer to a demand of his for more
faithful study; "must I?" And throwing up her proud little head, and
shaking back with a trick she had her streaming red hair, she looked
straight at him from her blue-gray eyes and asked the monosyllabic
question, "Why?" And The Duke looked back at her with his slight smile
for a few moments and then said in cold, even tones:
"I really don't know why," and turned his back on her.
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