"He was more at home with a rod or a gun," assented Pamela. "Only for the noise he made you'd never know he was in the house. There was no fun he wasn't up to." Mr. Graydon's face suddenly became serious. "You'll remember this lad's not Mick, Pam," he said; "you and Sylvia, I mean, for, of course, Mary is always prudent. Don't behave with him as if you were all boys together. Now, that locking Mick in the hayloft, or going with him to Whiddy Fair, would never do with this boy." "That was five years ago, dad," answered Pamela, looking with a demure smile at the hem of her pink cotton frock where it covered her shoes. "We were wild little colts of girls, then, with our hair down our backs. Besides, we never meant to _leave_ Mick in the hayloft; we only forgot he was there in the delight of finding a wild bees' nest; and we cried coming home from Whiddy Fair, we were so tired and so hungry." "Till I overtook you with Frisky, and drove you home and comforted you." "You should have spanked us, dad, and sent Mick to the right-about." "So I should. If you'd been boys, I daresay I'd have known a better way with you. But what can one do with little girls? Then poor Mick. I knew it wasn't Mick's fault. You'd been leading him astray, as usual." But Frisky had pulled up suddenly at a rather dilapidated gate, with a post falling to pieces, and the two halves of the gate fastened together with a piece of string. Out of the lodge within poured a stream of blue-eyed and chubby children, who stood regarding Frisky and his freight with shy and friendly smiles. "Halloa, you rascals," called out Mr. Graydon, "run and call your mother, some of you. Gone with your father's dinner, is she? She seems to be always gone with your father's dinner. You can't get down to open the gate, Pam? No, I see you can't; you're built in with parcels round your feet. Here, take the reins, and I'll get down myself. Only don't let Frisky get his head, or he'll run off with the other post, as he did with that one." "Frisky is not likely to do that, dad. He's got more sedate since those days. It was about the same time that Sylvia and I locked Mick in the hayloft." "Five years ago, Pam? It can't be five years ago. I'd never have left that post unmended five years. Why, it was only the other day I was saying I'd have over the mason from Lettergort to mend it." He had now done fumbling with the tie of the gate, and Pamela drove into the overgrown avenue. While he was replacing the bit of string he kept up a running fire of jests with the small, shame-faced children, to which she listened with a half-smile. "Dear old dad," she said to herself. "He has been so long letting things go that he even forgets that he has let them go. And I'm his own daughter." She took up a breadth of her pink frock and looked at it. There was a rent of at least three inches in it. Pamela shook her head in mute self-reproach.