A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

may go abroad next week to stay ever and ever so long.”
The Colonel brought his fist down on his knees: “I don't care a hang
where he goes. It's you we are talking about. You've got to promise me
not to go with him this afternoon.”
“But why?”
“Because,” the Colonel argued feebly, “because it's Sunday.”
Miss Lady sat for a moment looking straight before her and there was a
contraction of her lips that might have passed for a comic imitation of
her father's had it not softened into a smile.
“Suppose I won't promise?” she said.
The Colonel's free hand gripped the arm of the chair, and he looked as
if he had every intention in the world of being firm.
“You see, if it is wrong for me to go riding on Sunday,” went on Miss
Lady, “it's wrong for you to go fishing. Suppose we both reform and stay
at home?”
The Colonel's eyes involuntarily flew to his cherished tackle, lying
ready for action on the top step, then they came back with a snap to the
top of a locust tree.
Miss Lady squeezed his arm and laughed: “Of course you don't want to
stay at home this glorious afternoon, neither do I! Now, that's settled.
Here comes Noah; I'll go and fix your lunch.”
It was not by any means the first time the daughter of the house of
Carsey had scored in a contest with her father. His subjection had begun
on that morning now nearly twenty years ago, when she had been placed
in his arms, a motherless bundle of helplessness without even a personal
name to begin life with.
That question of a name had baffled him. He had consulted all the
neighbors, considered all the possibilities in the back of the
dictionary, and even had recourse to the tombstones in the old cemetery,
but the haunting fear that in days to come she might not like his
choice, held him back from a final decision. In the meanwhile she was
“The Little Lady,” then “Lady,” and finally through the negroes it got
to be “Miss Lady.” So the Colonel weakly compromised in the matter by
deciding to wait until she was old enough to name herself. When that
time arrived she stubbornly refused to exchange her nickname for a real
one. A halfhearted effort was made to harness her up to “Elizabeth,” but
she flatly declined to answer to the appellation.
She and Noah Wicker, the son of a neighboring farmer, had run wild on
the big place, and it was Miss Lady who invariably got to the top of
the peach tree first, or dared to wade the farthest into the stream.
All through the summer days her little bare legs raced beside Noah's
sturdier brown ones. She could handle a fishing rod as well as her
father, could ride and drive and shoot, and was on terms of easy
friendship with every neighbor who passed over the brow of Billy-goat
Hill.
The matter of education had been the first serious break in this idyllic
existence. After romping through the country school, she had had several