He came down and examined it:  it was done excellently well, like most of the things miss Judy attempted—­mischief always included:  and her little black-stockinged legs were still in a good state of preservation.

“Hum!  Well, you can finish it then, as Pat’s busy.  How did you learn to mow, young lady of wonderful accomplishments?” (he looked at her questioningly); “and what made you set yourself such a task?”

Judy gave her curls a quick push off her hot forehead.

“(A) Faix, it was inborn in me,” she answered instantly; “and
 (B)—­sure, and don’t I lo-o-ove you and delaight to plaize you?”

He went in again slowly, thoughtfully.  Judy always mystified him.  He understood her the least of any of his children, and sometimes the thought of her worried him.  At present she was only a sharp, clever, and frequently impertinent child; but he felt she was utterly different from the other six, and it gave him an aggrieved kind of feeling when he thought about it, which was not very often.

He remembered her own mother had often said she trembled for Judy’s future.  That restless fire of hers that shone out of her dancing eyes, and glowed scarlet on her cheeks in excitement, and lent amazing energy and activity to her young, lithe body, would either make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her, or else she would be shipwrecked on rocks the others would never come to, and it would flame up higher and higher and consume her.

“Be careful of Judy” had been almost the last words of the anxious mother when, in the light that comes when the world’s is going out, she had seen with terrible clearness the stones and briars in the way of that particular pair of small, eager feet.

And she had died, and Judy was stumbling right amongst them now, and her father could not “be careful” of her because he absolutely did not know how.

As he went up the veranda steps again and through the hall, he was wishing almost prayerfully she had not been cast in so different a mould from the others, wishing he could stamp out that strange flame in her that made him so uneasy at times.  He gave a great puff at his cigar, and sighed profoundly; then he turned on his heel and went off toward the stables to forget it all.

The man was away, exercising one of the horses in the long paddock; but there was something stirring in the harness-room, so he went in.

There was a little, dripping wet figure standing over a great bucket, and dipping something in and out with charming vigour.  At the sound of his footsteps, Baby turned round and lifted a perspiring little face to his.

“I’se washing the kitsies for you, and Flibberty-Gibbet,” she said beamingly.

He took a horrified step forward.

There were two favourite kittens of his, shivering, miserable, up to their necks in a lather of soapy water; and Flibberty-Gibbet, the beautiful little fox terrier he had just bought for his wife, chained to a post, also wet, miserable, and woebegone, also undergoing the cleansing process, and being scrubbed and swilled till his very reason was tottering.