He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he had occupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husband dependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one in French's eyes. "Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable," said French. "Roads and schools do as well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you a magistrate directly." Roger laughed. "That would be a good one!--I say, you know, I hope Daphne's going to like Heston." French hoped so too, guardedly. "I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?" He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug. "That doesn't matter." "I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomed to be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of people making up to her--and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon good French--learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what they talk about--but she's a queen--I can tell you! She doesn't want Archdeacons prating at her." "It'll be all right when she knows the people." "Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick up the threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the old place for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn't much to amuse Daphne here." "She'll be doing up the house." "And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art's an awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about _quattro-cento_ and _cinque-cento_, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarred with the same brush." Roger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't care, so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child." His ruddy countenance took a shade of anxiety. French inquired what reason there was to suppose that Beatty would not thrive perfectly at Heston. Roger could only say that the child had seemed to flag a little since their arrival. Appetite not quite so good, temper difficult, and so on. Their smart lady-nurse was not quite satisfied. "And I've been finding out about doctors here," the young father went on, knitting his brows: "blokes, most of them, and such old blokes! I wouldn't trust Beatty to one of them. But I've heard of a new man at Hereford--awfully good, they say--a wunner! And after all a motor would soon run him out!" He went on talking eagerly about the child, her beauty, her cleverness, the plans Daphne had for her bringing up, and so on. No other child ever had been, ever could be, so fetching, so "cunning," so lovely, such a duck! The Frenches, indeed, possessed a boy of two, reputed handsome. Roger wished to show himself indulgent to anything that might be pleaded for him. "Dear little fellow!"--of course. But Beatty! Well! it was surprising, indeed, that he should find himself the father of such a little miracle; he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. Herbert French smiled as he walked.