engaging frankness.  These traits, the people saw, the father disapproved of and checked, and the young girl was regarded with great pity.  “Ah,” they would say, “he is a wonderful Keeper of the Key, but, alas, how harsh a father!” He would not allow the girl any individual freedom; she was under eternal escort when abroad; she was denied the society of those of her years; she was a flower whose fragrance it was not the privilege of the people to enjoy.  It may be that the people, in murmuring against all this, did not make sufficient allowance for the circumstances of the life of the Keeper of the Key.  He was alone, he stood apart from all men.  His only passion in life had been the strict guardianship of a trust.  In these circumstances his affections for his only child were direct and crude and, too, maybe a little unconsciously harsh.  His love for his child was the love of the oyster for its pearl.  The people saw nothing but the rough, tight shells which closed about the treasure in the mansion of the Keeper of the Key.  More than one considerable wooer had approached that mansion, laying claim to the pearl which it held.  All were met with the same terrible dark scowl and sent about their business.  “You, sir,” the Keeper of the Key would say, “come to my door, knock upon my knocker, lay hands upon my door knob—­my golden door knob—­and ask for my daughter’s hand!  Sir, your audacity is your only excuse.  Let it also be your defence against my wrath.  Now, sir, a very good day!” And when the citizens heard that yet another gallant wooer had come and been dismissed they would say, “The poor child, the poor child, what a pity!”

The truth was that the daughter of the Keeper of the Key was not in the least unhappy.  She had a tremendous opinion of her father; she lavished upon him all the warm affection of her young ardour.  She reigned like a young queen within the confines of her home.  She was about the gardens and the grounds all day, as joyous as a bird.  Once or twice her governess gave her some inkling as to the suitors who came to the mansion requesting her hand, for that is an affair that cannot be kept from the most jealously-guarded damsel.  The governess had a sense of humour and entertained the girl with accounts of the manner of lovers who, as she put it, washed up the marble steps of the mansion to the oak door, like waves on a shore, and were sent back again into the ocean of rejections.  The young girl was much amused and secretly flattered at these events.  “Ah,” she would say, in a little burst of rapture, “how splendid is my father!” The pearl rejoices in the power of the oyster to shut it away from the world.