At any rate, before he reached the drawing-room, he understood that what he had been so busy dressing up was not anything half so trumpery as his mere external body and appearance. It was his interior person. That black tie, properly made for once, was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; only, having forgotten, or possibly never heard the phrase, he could not make use of it! ‘It’s that little, sandy-haired witch after all!’ he thought to himself. ‘Joan’s coming—a woman’s coming—has made me realise it. I must behave my best, and look my best. It’s my soul dressing up for Nixie, I do declare!’ CHAPTER XXI Persons with real force of purpose carry about with them something that charges unconsciously the atmosphere of others. Paul ‘felt’ this woman. The first impact of her presence, as has been seen, came almost as a shock. The ‘shocks,’ however, did not continue—as such. Her influence worked in him underground, as it were. She slipped easily and naturally into the quiet routine of the little household in the Grey House under the hill, till it seemed as if she had been there always. Margaret had insisted at once that there could be no ‘Missing’ and ‘Mistering’; Dick’s niece must be Joan, and her brother Paul; and the more familiar terms of address were adopted without effort on both sides. The children helped, too. They were all in the same Society, and before a week had passed she had heard all the ‘aventures,’ and entered into the discovery of new ones, even contributing some herself with a zest that delighted Paul, and made him feel wholly at his ease with her. It was all real to her; she could not otherwise have shown an interest; for sham had no part in her nature, and her love for these fatherless children was as great as his own, and similar in kind. ‘You have given their “Society” a new lease of life,’ she told him; ‘you are an enormous addition to it.’ ‘Enormous—yes!’ he laughed. ‘Enormously useful at the same time,’ she laughed in return, ‘because you not only increase their imagination; you train it, and show them how to use it.’ ‘To say nothing of the indirect benefits I receive myself,’ he added. And, after a pause, she said: ‘For myself, too, it’s the best kind of holiday I could possibly have. To come down here into all this, straight from my waifs in London, is like coming into that Crack-land you have shown them. I wish—I wish I could introduce it all to my big sad world of unwashed urchins. They have so few chances.’ A sudden flash of enthusiasm ran over her face like sunlight. ‘Perhaps, when they come down here next week for a day’s outing, we might try!—if you will help me, that is?’ She looked up. Something in the simple words touched him; her singleness of aim stirred the depths in him. He promised eagerly. ‘When it’s out,’ she added presently, ‘I’m going to give copies of your book of aventures to some of them. A good many will understand——’