‘When were your last letters dated?’ ‘The last week in September.’ ‘Early days,’ muttered the colonel. ‘I thought it an experiment, you know; but you said so much about Lily’s girls being patterns, that I thought Jasper Merrifield might have made her more rational and less flighty, and all that sort of thing; but of course it was a very different tone from what the child was used to, and you couldn’t tell what the young barbarians were out of sight.’ ‘So I began to think last winter; but I fancy you will find that she and Lily understand one another a good deal better than they did at first.’ ‘I thought she did not receive my intelligence as a deliverance. I am glad if she can carry away an affectionate remembrance, but I want to have her under my own eye.’ ‘I suppose that’s all right,’ was the half reluctant reply. ‘There’s Phyllis. She is full of good sense, with no nonsense about her or May, and her girls are downright charming.’ ‘Very likely; but I say, Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You’ve had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had some ways that made it hard for Lily to deal with her at first.’ Her father plainly did not like this. ‘There was no harm in the poor child, but as I should have foreseen, there’s always an atmosphere of sentiment and ritual and flummery about Lilias, totally different from what she was used to.’ Colonel Mohun had nearly said, ‘So much the better,’ but turned it into, ‘I think you will change your opinion.’ Brothers and sisters, and cousins, whatever they may be to the external world, always remain relatively to each other pretty much as they knew one another when a single home held them all. The familiar Christian names seemed to revive the old ways, and it was amusing to see the somewhat grave and silent colonel treated by his elder brother as the dashing, heedless boy, needing to be looked after, while his sister Jane remained the ready helper and counsellor, and Lady Merrifield was still in his eyes the unpractical, fanciful Lily with an unfortunately suggestive rhyme to her name. Perhaps it maintained him in this opinion, that when he had answered all questions about Captain and Mrs. Harry May, and had dilated on their pretty house in the suburbs of Auckland, his sisters expected him to tell of the work of the Church among the Maoris and Fijians. He laughed at them for thinking colonists troubled their heads about natives. ‘I know Phyllis does. One of Harry May’s brothers went out as a missionary.’ ‘Disenchanted and came home again when his wife came into a fortune.’