“Marraine, he hit the puppy, and I’ve bought him for ten pounds; at least, Dad will send a cheque tonight.  I’ve given him half-a-crown and my bracelet on account.”

“Call Hobson,” said her grace to the bird, who, obeying, had shrilly piped, “Tumble up, men, tumble up,” until Hobson the maid suddenly surged, from the second-class and ploughed her way through the delighted crowd.

“Give the purse and bracelet to my maid, you------”

“Swab,” supplemented the parrot.

“-----at once,” finished her grace, just as, with a cry of “Here’s
Dad!”  Damaris ran to meet her father, who, having got hung up in the
traffic, had failed to meet the train.   He listened patiently, with
dancing eyes, to the story, smiled across at the duchess, gave the man
a pound-note and a jolly good talking to, and acquired a bull pup with
the Rodney Stone strain, which they promptly christened Wellington, as
it had won at Waterloo.

Wellington forthwith developed an inordinate jealousy of Jane Coop.

Jane Coop was maid, adviser and buffer to the girl whom she loved more than anyone on earth.

Born on the Squire’s lands, she had developed a positive genius for mothering delicate lambs and calves and sickly chicks, so that when a crisis had arrived almost immediately after the birth of Damaris, the Squire had bundled the highly-certificated nurse into a motor and sent her packing back to London, and called upon Jane Coop to rise to the occasion.

She had risen.

Bonny and plump, she had taken the weakly little bit of humanity, also the situation, into her strong, capable hands; treated the mother and babe just as she would have treated a couple of delicate lambs, and pulled them both through.

From that day forth she had dominated the house, tyrannised over the Squire and his lady, defied each and every governess who had shown signs of undue strictness, and found her reward for her devotion in the love of the child who teased her to death and—­in the long run—­obeyed her.

She had shown herself a positive sheep-dog on board the boat.  She had rounded up her white lamb and yapped upon the heels of those who dared approach with too great familiarity; had bristled and shown her teeth upon every possible occasion, until those who would fain have led the girl into new and verdant pastures had fled at the sheep-dog’s approach, leaving them both to enjoy the novelty of everything, each after her own kind.

Damaris revelled in it all:  the seagulls; the lighthouses; the ships that passed in the day and night; and the tail-end of a storm they hit up in the Bay, whilst Jane Coop invented new verses to the Litany as she tried, in her cabin, to solve the problem of two into one, and Wellington, somewhere under the water-line, daily gave a fine imitation of hell-bound to a circle of admiring seamen.