“But this won’t hurt you.  You will drink this?” She gave him one of her most beautiful looks.

“I would as soon drink the water the maids wash up in, my child.”  He took a mulberry, ate it, and made a wry face.  “They’re not, fit to eat.”

“After you’ve eaten about six you don’t notice they’re sour,” she said eagerly.  But he pushed them away.

“I’ll take your word for it.”  Then he looked at her curiously.  “What made you think of bringing me anything, Nellie?  I don’t ever remember you doing so before.”

“I thought you might be hungry writing here so long,” she said gently; and Pip choked again badly, and she withdrew.

Outside in the blazing sunshine Judy was mowing the lawn.

They only kept one man, and, as his time was so taken up with the horses and stable work generally, the garden was allowed to fall into neglect.  More than once the Captain had spoken vexedly of the untidy lawns, and said he was ashamed for visitors to come to the house.

So Judy, brimming over with zeal, armed herself with an abnormally large scythe, and set to work on the long, long grass.

“Good heavens, Helen! you’ll cut your legs off!” called her father, in an agitated tone.

He had stepped out on to the front veranda for a mild cigar after the mulberry just as she brought her scythe round with an admirable sweep and decapitated a whole army of yellow-helmeted dandelions.

She turned and gave him a beautiful smile.  “Oh, no, Father!—­why, I’m quite a dab at mowing.”

She gave it another alarming but truly scientific sweep.

“See that—­and th-a-at—­and tha-a-a-at!”

“Th-a-at” carried off a fragment of her dress, and “tha-a-a-at” switched off the top of a rose-bush; but there are details to everything, of course.

“Accidents will happen, even to the best regulated grass-cutters,” she said composedly, and raising the scythe for a fresh circle.

“Stop immediately, Helen!  Why ever can’t you go and play quietly with your doll, and not do things like this?” said her father irascibly.

“An’ I was afther doin’ it just to pleasure him,” she said, apparently addressing the dandelions.

“Well, it won’t ‘pleasure him’ to have to provide you with cork legs and re-stock the garden,” he said dryly:  “Put it down.”

“Sure, an’ it’s illigence itsilf this side:  you wouldn’t be afther leaving half undone, like a man with only one cheek shaved.”

Judy affected an Irish brogue at some occult reason of her own.

“Sure an’ if ye’d jist stip down and examine it yirself, it’s quite aisy ye’d be in yer moind.”

The Captain hid a slight smile in his moustache.  The little girl looked so comical, standing there in her short old pink frock, a broken-brimmed hat on her tangle of dark curls, her eyes sparkling, her face flushed, the great scythe in her hands, and the saucy words on her lips.