Greatheart

She shook her head slightly. "I don't remember. But it doesn't matter. I'm not hungry."

He took one of her icy hands and began to rub it. "Poor child!" he said. "You ought to be given some hot bread and milk and tucked up in bed with hot bottles."

Her face began to work. "That," she said, "is the last thing that will happen to me."

"Haven't you been to bed at all?" he questioned.

Her throat was moving spasmodically; she bowed her head to hide her face from him. "Yes," she said in a whisper. "My mother--my mother put me there." And then as if the words burst from her against her will, "She thrashed me first with a dog-whip; but dogs have got hair to protect them, and I--had nothing. She only stopped because--I fainted. She hasn't finished with me now. When I go back--when I go back--" She broke off. "But I'm not going," she said, and her voice was flat and hard again. "Even you can't make me do that. There'll be another express this afternoon."

Scott knelt down beside her, and took her bowed head on to his shoulder. "Listen to me, Dinah!" he said. "I am going to help you, and you mustn't try to prevent me. If you had only allowed me, I would have gone home again with you yesterday, and this might have been avoided. My dear, don't draw yourself away from me! Don't you know I am a friend you can trust?"

The pitiful tenderness of his voice reached her, overwhelming her first instinctive effort to draw back. She leaned against him with painful, long-drawn sobs.

He held her closely to him with all a woman's understanding. "Oh, don't cry any more, child!" he said. "You're worn out with crying."

"I feel--so bad--so bad!" sobbed Dinah.

"Yes, yes. I know. Of course you do. But it's over, it's over. No one shall hurt you any more."

"You don't--understand," breathed Dinah. "It never will be over--while I live. I'm hurt inside--inside."

"I know," he said again. "But it will get better presently. Isabel and I are going to take you away from it all."

"Oh no!" she said quickly. "No--no--no!" She lifted her head from his shoulder and turned her poor, stained face upwards. "I couldn't do that!" she said. "I couldn't! I couldn't!"