“Good Lord!” he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpected and oriental action.

And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which lay nearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of rare golden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.

“And what shall we do when you come?  Can you ride?  I know of a lovely pony a little boy rides!”

Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely the penalty of her sex for the first time in her life.

“I can’t wide astwide,” she sighed, “I haven’t any bweeches.  Jill and Maudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts.  But I can swim,” she added quickly, “an’ jump in out of my depff.  I learnt in the baff at the seaside!”

“Oh! come along, child, do!” broke in her aunt to her own undoing.

“Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn’t,” proceeded Leonie in a gallant effort to shore up her family’s sporting reputation.

“I do not, Leonie!  I can’t imagine how you ever got such an idea into your head!”

But Leonie, nothing daunted, shook back her russet mop of hair and gave direct answer, to the confusion of the domestic who happily stood out of Lady Hetth’s eye-range.

“But, Auntie!  I’ve often heard Wilkins tell Nannie that you’ve been in off the deep end before bweakfast!  Oh! do let me hold him just for ever such a little while!”

To save the expression of his face Jan Cuxson had bent and lifted the pup by the scruff of its neck, and upon the piteous appeal put it squirming and wriggling in the outstretched arms.

Great tears dripped all over the animal though Leonie stood on one foot, bit her underlip, and squeezed the puppy to suffocation in a valiant effort to restrain this appalling sign of weakness.

“Tell me what makes you cry like that?”

“My—­my kitten was—­was stwangled by—­by someone this morning, an’—­an’ she was all soft an’—­an’ fluffy like——­”

The words ended in a paroxysm of sobs muffled in the puppy’s coat whereupon it ecstatically licked every visible part of the child’s neck, whilst Ellen, throwing decorum to the winds, knelt down and drew the shaking little figure into her arms.

“Anybody in there!” suddenly and very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerking his head in the direction of the room where the few and favoured awaited the pleasure of the specialist.

“No, Sir,” replied Ellen, as she disentangled one of the puppy’s claws from the lace on Leonie’s sleeve.  “I’m going to call my father!  I don’t think you understand your little girl very well!”

He spoke quite gently but his face was white with anger, that almost terrifying rage which surges over and through the mentally and physically strong at the sight, or thought, of cruelty to the small and weak.

He whistled two exceedingly sharp notes and plunged his hands into his pockets, where he scrunched up his keys and some loose change.