"Foolish child; are you mad?" he said, so gravely yet so gently that Fay let them go, and let him drive her back to the stable-yard, where she sprang out, and rushed away to her own room, terrified the governor with a few vehement sentences, which gave him a vague idea that Keane was murdered and both Fay's legs broken, and then had a private cry all to herself, with her arms round Snowdrop's neck, curled up in one of the drawing-room windows, where she had not been long when the General and Keane passed through, not noticing her, hidden as she was, in curtains, cushions, and flowers. "She's a little wilful thing, Keane," the General was saying, "but you mustn't think the worse of her for that." "I don't. I am sick of those conventional young ladies who agree with everything one says to them--who keep all the frowns for mothers and servants, and are as serene as a cloudless sky abroad, smile blandly on all alike, and haven't an opinion of their own." "Fay's plenty of opinions of her own," chuckled the General; "and she tells 'em pretty freely, too. Bless the child, she's not ashamed of any of her thoughts and never will be." "I hope not. Your little niece can do things that no other young lady could and they are so pretty in her that it would be a thousand pities for her to grow one atom less natural and wilful. Grapes growing wild are charming--grapes trained to a stake are ruined. I assure you, if I were you, I would not scold her for driving those colts to-day. High spirits and love of fun led her on, and the courage and presence of mind she displayed are too rare among her sex for us to do right in checking them." "To be sure, to be sure," assented the governor, gleefully. "God bless the child, she's one among a thousand, sir. Cognac, not milk and water. There's the dinner-bell; confound it." Whereat the General made his exit, and Keane also; and Fay kissed the spaniel with even more passionate attachment than ordinary. "Ah, Snowdrop, I don't hate him any more; he is a darling!" One glowing August morning Keane was in the study pondering whether he would go to his moor or not. The General had besought him to stay. His gamekeeper wrote him that it was a horribly bad rainy season in Invernessshire; the trout and the rabbits were very good sport in a mild way here. Altogether, Keane felt half disposed to keep where he was, when a shadow fell across his paper; and, as he looked up, he saw in the open window the English rosebud. "Is it not one of the open questions, Mr. Keane," asked Fay, "whether it is very wise to spend all this glorious morning shut out of the sight of the sun-rays and the scent of the flowers?" "How have _you_ been spending it, then?" "Putting bouquets in all the rooms, cleaning my aviary, talking to the puppies, and reading Jocelyn under the limes in the shrubberies--all very puerile, but all very pleasant. Perhaps if you descended to a lazy day like that now and then, you might be none the worse!"