"It was beautiful, my child, quite beautiful," he said. Jane-Anne went back to the kitchen to wash dishes, perfectly happy. Curly waited till Mr. Wycherly sat down again. "And so you wonder what that child will be?" he asked. "I do, indeed," sighed Mr. Wycherly. "And she, with those great eyes set so wide apart?" "That," said Mr. Wycherly, "is the Greek type." "Every great actress," Curly said sententiously, "has her eyes set wide apart. There has never been a ferrety-faced actress worth anything." "But what has that got to do with Jane-Anne," Mr. Wycherly said in a puzzled voice. Curly laughed. "I shan’t tell you," he said. "Only I know what she will be, and you needn’t worry or try to stop it, for you can’t." "I hope she will be nothing of the kind," Mr. Wycherly said hotly. "Poor little nymph, so sensitive, so loving-hearted, so wise, and at times, so amazingly silly." "They are like that," said Curly. * * * * * Next morning, Mr. Wycherly told Jane-Anne that the friend who had dined with him the night before was an actor, and that the company he was in was performing "As you Like It" that afternoon in a ducal garden not very far from Oxford; and finally that he was going to take her to see it. That day was one long _festa_ for Jane-Anne. First of all came the drive, sitting side by side with Mr. Wycherly in a hired victoria. She wore her best summer frock and hat, beautiful white garments chosen by Mrs. Methuen, that filled her soul with rapture every time she put them on; white cotton gloves that Mrs. Dew had washed that morning, thin black stockings, and the light shoes Mr. Wycherly had insisted upon after he had seen her dance under the apple-tree. Mrs. Dew watched them drive away with great pride. "I will say this," she said to her friend, Miss Morecraft, that afternoon, "that when Jane-Anne’s dressed you couldn’t tell her from one of the gentry. She’s got something about her, my sister had it, and her father—not as I ever cared for him—had it, too. I think if my sister could have seen her this afternoon she’d be set up, that I do. He’s a fine-looking old gentleman, too; handsome he is, and no mistake." A good many people regarded the quaint pair with pleasure. They were so manifestly proud and fond of each other, and the child was so radiantly happy. The crowds of well-dressed people delighted her. The garden was beautiful, the weather perfect, and with thrills of the wildest excitement she recognised Curly as Orlando. When it was over, her first criticism was characteristic. "I’d have made a better boy than that if I’d been Rosalind; she wasn’t a bit like a boy really, was she? If ever I pretended to be a boy I’d try to behave like Master Edmund, then I don’t believe anyone would rekkernise me."