“What! in four days?  Nonsense.”

“But,” said the counsel in the case, “it’s to be ten.  It isn’t about John, it’s Dixy’s mouth, uncle.”

“Oh, you darling little liar!” Here she kissed him and was silent.  “It won’t do,” he said.  “There’s no logic in a kiss, Miss Grey.  First comes Ann Grey and says, too much army discipline; and then you tell me what that gossiping old darkey says, and then you try the final argument—­a kiss.  Can’t do it.  There will be an end of all discipline.  I hate practical jokes.  There!”

If he thought to finish the matter thus, he much undervalued the ingenuity and persistency of the young Portia who was now conducting the case.

“Suppose you take a chair, Miss Grey.  It is rather warm to provide permanent human seats for stout young women—­”

“I’m not stout,” said Leila with emphasis, accepting the hint by dropping with coiled legs upon a cushion at his feet.  “I’m not stout.  I weigh one hundred and thirty and a half pounds.  And oh! isn’t it hot.  I haven’t had a swim for—­oh, at least five days counting Sunday.”  The pool was kept free until noon for Leila and her aunt.

“Why didn’t you swim?” he asked lightly, being too intellectually busy clearing his pipe to see where the leading counsel was conducting him.

“Why, Uncle Jim, I wouldn’t swim if John wasn’t allowed too; I just couldn’t.  I’m going to bed—­but, please, don’t let Pat ride Dixy.”

“I can attend to my stables, Miss Grey.  John won’t die of heat for want of a swim.  You don’t seem to concern yourself with those equally overbaked young scamps in Westways.”

“Uncle Jim, you’re just real mean to-night.  Josiah told me yesterday that my cousin beat Tom McGregor because he said it was mean of you to stop the swimming.  John said it was just, and Tom said he was a liar, and—­oh, my!  John licked him—­wish I’d seen it.”

This was news quite to his liking.  He made no reply, lost in wonder over the ways of the mind male and female.

“You ought to be ashamed, you a girl, to want to see a fight.  It’s time you went to school.  Isn’t the rector on the porch?  I thought I heard him.”

Now, of late Leila had got to that stage of the game of thought-interchange when the young proudly use newly acquired word-counters.  “I think, Uncle Jim, you’re—­you’re irreverent.”

The Squire shut the door on all outward show of mirth, and said gravely, “Isn’t it pronounced irrelevant, my dear Miss Malaprop?”

“Yes—­yes,” said Leila.  “That’s a word John uses.  It’s just short for ’flying the track’!”

“Any other stable slang, Leila?”

He was by habit averse to changing his decisions, and outside of Ann Penhallow’s range of authority the Squire’s discipline was undisputed and his decrees obeyed.  He had been pleased and gaily amused for this half hour, but was of a mind to leave unchanged the penalties he had inflicted.