Mr. Gillet had brought materials for a damper, by special request, and after lunch prepared to make it, so they might have it for afternoon tea.

“Pheough!” said Judy.  “Is that how you make it?  You need not give me any.”

It certainly was manufactured with surprising celerity.

Mr. Gillet merely tossed some flour from a bag out upon a plate, added a pinch of salt and some water; then he shaped it into a cake of dough, and laid it on the ashes of the fire, covering it all over with the hot, silver ash.

“How dirty!” said Nell, elevating her pretty little nose.

But when it was cooked, and Mr. Gillet lifted it up and dusted the ash away—­lo! it was high and light and beautifully white.

So they ate it, and took mental marginal notes to make it in the paddocks at Misrule for each and every picnic to come.

They piled up two plates of good things and put in the brown man’s cupboard, and Mr. Gillet laid is unread English papers on the chair near the cat.

“That ‘Telegraph’ is a month old,” he said deprecatingly seeing Meg smile upon him her first smile that day.

Chapter XIX A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon

    She in her virginal beauty
    As pure as a pictured saint,
    How should this sinning and sorrow
    Have for her danger or taint?

The reason our sweet pale Margaret had been reluctant of her smiles was on account of the very man who alone missed them.

Quite a warm friendship had sprung up during the month between the little fair-faced girl, who looked with such serene blue eyes to a future she felt must be beautiful, and the world-worn man, who looked back to a past all blackened and unlovely by his own acts.

He rode with the two girls every-day, because Mrs. Hassal did not like them going long distances alone; and, seeing Judy seldom walked her horse, and Meg’s steed had not a canter in it, it fell out that he kept beside the slow and timid rider all the time.

“You remind me of a little sister I had who died,” he said slowly to Meg once, after a long talk.  “Perhaps if she were alive now I should not be quite so contemptible.”

Meg’s face flushed scarlet, and a shamed look had come into her eyes.  It seemed altogether terrible to her that he should know she knew of his failing.

“Perhaps it makes her sorry now,” she said in a whisper he scarcely heard, and then she grew pale at her boldness, and rode on a little way to hide her distressed looks.

On the way home the pale-blue ribbon, that tied the strands of her sunny plait together, blew off.  He dismounted and picked it up.  Meg stretched out her hand for it, but he untied the bow and folded it slowly round his big hand.

“May I keep it?” he said in a low voice.  “For my blue ribbon?  I know the conditions that attach.”