"You don't, do you?"
"Why, I'm afraid not," he admitted.
"I'm nineteen!" said she, standing very erect.
"I should have judged you a little older," said Barnabas.
"So I am--in mind, and--and experience. Yet here I live, prisoned in
a dreary old house, and with nothing to see but trees, and toads,
and cows and cabbages; and I'm watched over, and tended from morning
till night, and am the subject of more councils of war than
Buonaparte's army ever was."
"What do you mean by councils of war?"
"Oh! whenever I do anything my tyrant disapproves of, he retires to
what he calls the 'round house,' summons the Bo'sun, and they argue
and talk over me as though I were a hostile fleet, and march up and
down forming plans of attack and defence, till I burst in on them,
and then--and then--Oh! there are many kinds of tyrants, and he is
one. And so to-night I left him; I ran away to meet--" She stopped
suddenly, and her head drooped, and Barnabas saw her white hands
clench themselves.
"Your brother," said he.
"Yes, my--brother," but her voice faltered at the word, and she went
on through the wood, but slowly now, and with head still drooping.
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