Posy, however, made other friends. When she came home for her first holidays, Quinney and Susan conspired together to make things pleasant for her. She had plenty of pocket money. Susan and she went to many plays, many concerts, all the good shows. Quinney rubbed his hands and chuckled, but he declined to accompany them. The two years of school passed with astonishing swiftness; and the improvement to Posy quickened a lively gratitude in Quinney to Lord Mel. She developed into a charming young woman, irresponsible as yet, but a joyous creature, easy to please and be pleased. Quinney was delighted with her. He told her solemnly: "My poppet, you’re a perfect lady; yes, you are." Posy went into peals of laughter. "Daddy, how funny you are!" This talk took place upon the day that Posy said good-bye to her school-fellows, and returned home as a more or less finished product of the boarding-school system. "Funny? Me? I don’t feel funny, my pretty, when I look at you. I feel proud. One way and t’other I suppose you’ve cost me nigh upon four thousand pounds!" "Daddy, dear! Not as much as that, surely?" Quinney cocked his head at a sharp angle, while he computed certain sums. "I figure it out in this way," he said slowly. "In hard cash you stand me in about fifteen hundred spread over the last ten years. Now, if I’d stuffed that amount into Waterford glass, I could have cleaned up five thousand at least. See?" "I see," said Posy, and laughed again. "The question now is," continued Quinney, absorbed in admiration of her delicate colouring, "what the ’ell am I going to do with such a fancy piece?" "Father!" exclaimed Susan. "Do please try to remember that you’re not talking to Mr. Tomlin." "When I feel strongly," replied Quinney simply, "I just have to use strong language. Posy has come home to what?" "She’s come home, Joe. That’s enough. Why bother about anything else?" "Because I’m the bothering sort, old dear—that’s why. I look ahead. I count my chickens before they’re hatched." Susan said slily: "Yes, you made sure that this chicken was going to be hatched a boy." The three laughed. It was a pleasant moment of compensation for long years of anxiety and toil. Each had worked for it. Posy had submitted, not without kickings and prickings, to strict discipline; Quinney, from the child’s birth, had determined that the stream must rise higher than its source; Susan, serenely hopeful about the future, had worried unceasingly over the present, concerned about petty ailments, the putting on and off of suitable under-linen, and so forth. "Don’t bother about me, daddy; I’m all right." "By Gum, you are! That’s why I bother. In my experience it’s the right bits that get smashed!" *V*