Never was comradeship more perfect or more wholly satisfactory.
"Just wrapped up in each other," said White Sands folk,
half-enviously, half-disapprovingly.
When Sara was sixteen Mrs. Adair, the wealthy aunt aforesaid, pounced down
on White Sands in a glamour of fashion and culture and outer worldliness.
She bombarded Old Man Shaw with such arguments that he had to succumb.
It was a shame that a girl like Sara should grow up in a place
like White Sands, "with no advantages and no education,"
said Mrs. Adair scornfully, not understanding that wisdom and knowledge
are two entirely different things.
"At least let me give my dear sister's child what I would have
given my own daughter if I had had one," she pleaded tearfully.
"Let me take her with me and send her to a good school for a few years.
Then, if she wishes, she may come back to you, of course."
Privately, Mrs. Adair did not for a moment believe that Sara
would want to come back to White Sands, and her queer old father,
after three years of the life she would give her.
Old Man Shaw yielded, influenced thereto not at all by Mrs. Adair's
readily flowing tears, but greatly by his conviction that
justice to Sara demanded it. Sara herself did not want to go;
she protested and pleaded; but her father, having become
convinced that it was best for her to go, was inexorable.
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