“Really, my dear, I don’t think such an idea has ever entered Sheila’s head. She is such a child still. She is fond of Miss Adene and these Dumaresqs, and they have taken a fancy to her; but I don’t think you need think such things of her. She is just as happy playing with the little boy as being with young Dumaresq; and it seems to me that he pays quite as much attention to Effie. I have taken care to let him know, in an indirect kind of way, that our little girl will have a pretty dower when she marries. And in these days young men think of such things. High time too, with the land depreciating as it is!” “Yes, and perhaps if Sheila were not here something might come of it. Effie has twice the character of Sheila, but there is something about the way that little flirt goes on that takes the fancy of people in a way I can’t understand! And if you would believe it, on New Year’s Eve, when I thought Ronald Dumaresq was sitting out with Effie watching the fireworks and so on—if you would believe it he had just turned her over to his aunt, and off he set down the hill in a carro, and found Sheila out on the verandah here, and stayed with her all the time! What do you call that sort of thing, I wonder?” “Well, my dear, I don’t see that Sheila was in fault. And there were other people out too. She was not alone. If young Dumaresq chose to come and watch the display from here, nobody could blame her.” “I expect it was a got-up thing between them. She never said a word about it either; I only heard it incidentally a few days ago. She is a very artful young minx—that is what she is!” Mr. Cossart was uncomfortable. He was a just man and a kindly one by nature; and Sheila’s pretty ways had taken his fancy as they had taken the fancy of others. He had no special matrimonial ambitions for his own daughter. He would very well have liked to see her the wife of Ronald Dumaresq; but, on the other hand, if the young man had other ideas for himself, he would never make a trouble of it. “There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” was a favourite maxim of his, and if Sheila were to get a handsome husband in Ronald, her uncle would wish her joy and be ready to arrange matters for her in fatherly fashion. But he knew by experience that his wife, when once her mind was made up, was inexorable.