Though not entirely, he had been to a large extent free from boyish flirtations and philandering. The necessity of hard work, shyness and fastidiousness, bodily temperament, had all combined to keep him out of such things. One passion of a glorious Oxford summer term he had counted the real thing and remembered even now with a tender exultation; for the girl's heart had been touched, though not to the point of defying either prudence or propriety--even had he ventured to urge such courses. Save for this episode, now remote since such age quickly, he was in essence a stranger in the field of love. He did not recognise nor analyse the curious little stir which was in him as he walked home that night--the feeling of a new gaiety, a new joyfulness, a sense of something triumphant and as it were liberated and given wings. He did not even get so far as to associate it explicitly and consciously with Marie Sarradet, though he did know that never had she seemed a dearer friend or a more winning girl than she had that night. He stood by the brink of the spring of love, but had not yet drunk of it nor recognised the hand that had led him there. The girl had gone back to her father and mixed him his 'night-cap' of hot toddy, as her custom was. While he sipped it, she stood beside him, looking down into the fire, still and meditative. Presently she became aware of his bright beady eyes set on her with a glance half-apprehensive, half-amused; she interpreted it easily. "A long time saying good-night, was I, Pops? And you think I've been flirting? Well, I haven't, and I couldn't have if I'd wanted to. Mr. Lisle never flirts. Joe pretends to sometimes, and Sidney--does. But Mr. Lisle--never!" "That needn't mean that a man has no serious intentions," Mr. Sarradet opined. She smiled. "With the English I think it does. We're not quite English, even after all this time, are we? At least you and I aren't; Raymond is, I think." "Raymond's a goose, English or not," said the father impatiently. "He's in debt again, and I have to pay! I won't leave my business to a spendthrift." "Oh, he'll get over it. He is silly but--only twenty-two. Pops!" "And at twenty you've as shrewd a head as I know on your shoulders! Get over it he must or----!" An indignant gulp of his 'night-cap' ended the sentence. "If you let him go in for something that he liked better than the business----" she began. "What business has he not to like the business! It's kept us in comfort for a hundred and fifty years. Isn't it good enough for him? It's been good enough for me and my forefathers. We've known what we were; we've never pretended to be anything else. We're honest merchants--shop-keepers. That's what we are." "Have patience, dear, I'll talk to him," she promised gently, and soothed the old fellow, whose bark was worse than his bite. "Well, he'll come to me for a cheque once too often, that's all," he grumbled, as he kissed his daughter and took himself off to bed.