“Sit down, Bawn,” she said, coming towards me, having left her hose to run at the foot of a rose tree.  “See how busy I am!  Of course, a gardener’s boy would do it but I love to give drink to the thirsty.”

She was wearing a cool muslin dress transparent at the neck.  Round her throat she had a slender chain with a locket to it.  She was brown as a berry, but she looked as though the hot weather dealt gently with her.  As she sat down by me and took Dido’s head into her lap, to the great discomfort of a rabble of jealous dogs who sat round watching her and whining, it struck me that her eyes were the very colour of the dog’s and as faithful.

“You look cool,” I said.

“And you; you have no idea how pink print becomes you.  But first we will have tea.  Joan has a sick headache and will have none of me to-day.  So we shall be just our two selves.”

As she said it I noticed a line of pain and weariness deepen in her forehead, and her lips droop ever so slightly.  It was something I had noticed before when Miss Standish had been more than commonly trying.  I looked at my godmother with new interest, having learnt what had befallen Uncle Luke.  She wore her hair in an old-fashioned way which became her.  It was in loops each side of her forehead, displaying her ears, and was then taken up and plaited at the back of her head.  The fashion was a quarter of a century old but nothing could have been prettier.

She took Dido’s head between her hands and looked down into her eyes.

“She is growing very old, Bawn,” she said sadly.

It reminded me of something Maureen had said and had not explained.

“Who gave Dido to Uncle Luke?” I asked.

She turned red and pale.

“What have you been hearing, Bawn?” she asked.

“Maureen has been talking to me about Uncle Luke.  I did not think it wrong to listen to her, since I knew that I was to hear the story from you.”

“Maureen did not spare me,” she said in a low voice.

“For the matter of that she said nothing.  She hinted that you had been hard on Uncle Luke, but she bid me ask yourself.”

“Do you think it likely I was hard to him, Bawn?”

She was looking into the dog’s eyes now and the dog into hers.  The two hearts that were always faithful to Uncle Luke understood each other.  Deep answered deep.

“I am sure you were not,” I said.

“Maureen did not know,” she went on gently.

    “Sure your dog for you could die
       With no truer heart than I,”

she murmured, with a fervour that startled me.  Then her eyes grew misty.