Meanwhile matters went on prosperously, with the Carricks and the Bradins. Bernard added a room to his house for Daffodil, and placed a window so she could see her mother's garden of posies. The baby grew amazingly, was well and strong, and positively pretty, looking a little like his mother, getting teeth without any trouble, walking, saying all manner of crooked words, and then straightening them, being a jolly, healthy child, and Norah's heart was bound up in him. She borrowed him half her time. "I'd be a happier woman with a houseful of them," she said, "Sandy always insisted he didn't care, but I know he does. He's just ready to eat up little Sandy without a grain of salt." They _would_ call him that, while his home name was Felix. His father called him baby at first, then son. He liked everybody, but he adored his own father. Barbe stood a little in the background, not that she loved him less, but she gave a continual thanksgiving that he had met with such a warm welcome. Daffodil was amused at his pretty ways, and the cunning bits of mischief that she often kept from his mother. She was so certain of her father's affection now. She took a warm interest in his doings, she sided with him about the country, and listened delightedly to the stories of bravery and endurance, and absolutely quarrelled with grandad when he predicted the wretched times that would follow throwing off the protection of the mother country, and the surety that an appeal would be made again for her protection. "An' just look at what they are saying about your precious Washington! They'll turn him out before he's served his four years. No two of them think alike! And how's the money to be raised for expenses! You silly child, you don't know anything about it. An' your father's a gey fule!" "I'll never come in this house again, grandad!" with a dignity that made her pink cheeks red and her blue eyes black. "Then sure you'll never go out of it on such terms!" and grandad caught her and scrubbed her with his stubby beard, and hugged her so tight she was glad to promise she would come to-morrow. And likely she ran over that very evening. "He's not worth the minding," Norry would declare. "He don't believe the half of it, and says it to see you spurt up. He's half the time spilin' for a quarrel that has no more in it than an empty eggshell." Daffodil began to have some new interests in her life. She was growing rapidly, she went to school, and met children of her own age. Several chapels had been started, and there was a real clergyman, though they could not have him regularly, and then a reader took the service. The men had various outdoor diversions that had been brought from "the old country," and were never loath to join the women's frolics, at which there was dancing, and, it must be admitted, not a little drinking.