“No, dear—­how can one like anybody one has only seen once?”

“Oh—­but I thought you might,” said Nellie.  “Don’t you think you will, mamma?  Say you will—­do!”

“Why?” asked her mother in some surprise.  “I cannot say anything about it.  I daresay he is very nice.”

“It will be so delightful to go to the Hall to dinner and be waited on by big real servants—­not like Susan at the vicarage, or Martha.  Won’t you like it, mamma?  Of course Mr. Juxon will have real servants, just like—­like poor papa.”  Nellie finished her speech rather doubtfully as though not sure how her mother would take it.  Mrs. Goddard sighed again, but said nothing.  She could not stop the child’s talking—­why should Nellie not speak of her father?  Nellie did not know.

“I think it will be perfectly delightful,” said Nellie, seeing she got no answer from her mother, and as though putting the final seal of affirmation to her remarks about the Hall.  But she appeared to be satisfied at not having been contradicted and did not return to the subject that evening.

Mr. Juxon lost no time in keeping his word and on the following morning at about eleven o’clock, when Mrs. Goddard was just hearing the last of Nellie’s lesson in geography and little Nellie herself was beginning to be terribly tired of acquiring knowledge in such very warm weather, the squire’s square figure was seen to emerge from the park gate opposite, clad in grey knickerbockers and dark green stockings, a rose in his buttonhole and a thick stick in his hand, presenting all the traditional appearance of a thriving country gentleman of the period.  He crossed the road, stopped a moment and whistled his dog to heel and then opened the wicket gate that led to the cottage.  Nellie sprang to the window in wild excitement.

“Oh what a dog!” she cried.  “Mamma, do come and see!  And Mr. Juxon is coming, too—­he has green stockings!”

But Mrs. Goddard, who was not prepared for so early a visit, hastily put away what might be described as the debris of Nellie’s lessons, to wit, a much thumbed book of geography, a well worn spelling book, a very particularly inky piece of blotting paper, a pen of which most of the stock had been subjected to the continuous action of Nellie’s teeth for several months, and an ancient doll, without the assistance of which, as a species of Stokesite memoria teohnica, Nellie declared that she could not say her lessons at all.  Those things disappeared, and, with them, Nellie’s troubles, into a large drawer set apart for the purpose.  By the time Mr. Juxon had rung the bell and Martha’s answering footstep was beginning to echo in the small passage, Mrs. Goddard had passed to the consideration of Nellie herself.  Nellie’s fingers were mightily inky, but in other respects she was presentable.

“Run and wash your hands, child, and then you may come back,” said her mother.