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Page 8
To what purpose should they? The one _knew_; the other firmly believed
in allowing the young to work out the salvation of their own souls;
which did not, however, mean that she would not keep a sharp look-out
in the future over the troubled sea of Life.
"I knew something would happen," thought the wise old lady, as she
passed a biscuit up to the parrot on her shoulder.
"_Kathir Khairak_," it said delightedly.
It merely means "thank you," but had taken weeks of teaching and
repeating to master.
CHAPTER III
"Lor! but women's rum cattle to deal with, the
first man found that to his cost;
And I reckon it's just through a woman, that the
last man on earth'll be lost."
G. R. SIMS.
Damaris was the only daughter of Squire Hethencourt. Her mother was an
Italian from the Udino, where the hair of the women is genuine
Titian-red and the eyes are blue; which perhaps accounted for her
colouring and some part of her temperament.
Her type of beauty was certainly remarkable--given, it must be
confessed, to a certain amount of fluctuation--and she danced divinely,
which gift must not be counted as a parlour-trick; she was slow in her
movements and quiet in her manner until she talked of horses or anybody
she loved; then her great eyes would flash and her laugh ring out, also
she would gesticulate as her mother had been wont to do, until the
climate, maybe, of a northern country had served to repress the
spontaneity of her Latin mannerisms.
She was simple and unsophisticated and would have made a splendid
little chum, if only one out of every three men who met her had not
been consumed with a desire to annex her for life by means of a gold
ring.
"Dads," she exclaimed, two months before the beginning of this story,
having enticed him to her bedroom one night and offered him cream
chocolates as he eat at the foot of her bed, facing her. "Dads, what
am I to do? Guy Danvers says he is coming to see you to-morrow, and
I--I am sure it will only turn out to be--well--you, know."
"But, Golliwog dear, I'm the one to be pitied. This makes the--how
many is it?"
"I don't know, Dads, and it isn't the number; it's the awful _habit_
they've got into--and I don't understand anything and I don't encourage
them, do I? Do lend me a hankie--this chocolate has burst--and what am
I to do?"
"Turn a deaf ear, or a cold shoulder, or put a brave face on,
until------" said Dads, retrieving his handkerchief.
"Until what?"
"Until the right man comes along, darling, as he surely will."
The girl's lids suddenly dropped until the lashes lay like a fringe
upon the white cheek over which very slowly but very surely crept the
faintest of rose-colours.
"Hum!" said Dads to himself, as he made great use of the hankie.
"Do smoke, dearest!"
"No, thank you, pet; I couldn't here."
The man who worshipped his wife and adored his little daughter looked
round the white and somewhat austere room, and ran his eye over the
bookstand at his elbow.
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