"Ah, I'm afraid this is a day, when you don't feel very good?"
"Oh, Daddy—please——!"
"Come along," he interrupted, taking her gently under the arms, raising her to her feet, and drawing her into the verandah. Then to Mayne—who had followed them, "When this sun-worshipper was a small, and unruly mite, she obligingly prepared me for the worst, by announcing, 'Daddy, I don't feel very good to-day.'"
"Oh, that story has been told all over the hills since I was two years old!" protested Miss Nancy. "People are always quoting it. Don't you think, Captain Mayne, that it is too bad of Daddy to give me away?"
"Make your mind easy, my dear child, your old Daddy will never give you away. Now come along into the dining-room, and give us some breakfast, and let Captain Mayne sample our famous Fairplains coffee."
CHAPTER IV
THE COFFEE ESTATE
The Fairplains coffee, fully maintained its high reputation, and the accompanying food was on the same satisfactory level; fresh cream, bread and butter, apricot jam, and new-laid eggs, grilled ham and chicken—what a welcome change, from the sodden West Coast fare, to which Mayne had been accustomed. Besides the menu, he could not help being impressed by the deep mutual affection, existing between Travers and his daughter; how quietly she forestalled all his requirements, how his dark eyes softened, when they met her glance, and how the pair laughed, and chaffed, one another with light-hearted enjoyment.
Mayne cast a thought to the domestic atmosphere of his own home. What a contrast to this! There, a fashionably youthful woman of fifty, shrank from the too convincing appearance of a son of seven and twenty, and her early morning manner was particularly chilly and acidulated. Breakfast was never a convivial meal.