Sir John made no comment, but gave no active support to the inclusion of Mr Dawks in the party. It may be noted, however, that when Daphne had at length achieved that feat which encroaches so heavily upon a woman's share of eternity--the putting on of her hat--and joined her guest in the garden accompanied by Mr Dawks in person, Apollyon greeted the owner of the name with far more cordiality than he had greeted the name itself. It is sometimes misleading to bestow Christian titles upon dumb animals. Once away from the rest of the family, Daphne's maternal solemnity fell from her like a schoolmaster's cap and gown in holiday time. She chattered like a magpie, pointing out such objects of local interest as-- (1) Farmer Preston's prize bull; (2) The residence of a reputed witch; (3) A spinney, where a dog-fox had once gone to ground at one end of an earth and a laughing hyena (subsequently ascertained to be the lost property of that peripatetic nobleman Lord George Sanger) had emerged from the other, to the entire and instantaneous disintegration of a non-abstaining local Hunt. "I say, where do you live?" she inquired suddenly, breaking off in the middle of a detailed history of Kirkley Abbey, whose _façade_ could be discerned through the trees on their right--"London?" "Yes." "All the year round?" "No. I spend a good deal of my time in the North." "Oh. What do you do there? What _are_ you, by the way?" Daphne looked up at her companion with bird-like inquisitiveness. She moved in a society familiar with the age, ancestry, profession, wardrobe, ailments, love affairs, and income of every one within a radius of five miles. Consequently she considered a new acquaintanceship incomplete in the last degree until she had acquired sufficient information on the subject in hand to supply, say, a tolerably intimate obituary notice. "I suppose you are _something_," she continued. "I hope so, anyhow. An idle man is always so mopy." "What would you put me down as?" asked Apollyon. Daphne scrutinised him without fear or embarrassment. "I'm not much of a judge," she said. "You see, we don't come across many men here, and we are so poor that we don't get away much." "Don't you go up to London occasionally, to buy a new frock?" said Sir John, covertly regarding the trim figure by his side. "Me--London? Not much. Dad has a lot of grand relations there, but I don't think he bothered much about them, or they about him, after he married. He was too much wrapped up in mother. So we never hear anything of them now. No, I have hardly ever been away from Snayling, and I'm a great deal too busy here to worry about London or any other such place. So I don't know much about men," she concluded simply--"except my own, of course." "Your own?"