Mayne looked at him expectantly, and stood up, prepared to accept this astonishing favour.
"My dear child," said Travers, "you are eighteen to-day, and must not go thrusting your kisses on young men."
"But I never did before," she protested.
"You should keep your first kiss for someone, who may come along one day!"
"Oh, Daddy," she murmured, blushing deeply through her tan, "now you have made me feel so shy, and uncomfortable. You all know," appealing to Ted and Nicky, "that I only wanted to do something, just to show Captain Mayne, how delighted I was—and am."
"You can do that in another way, Nancy," he replied, resuming his seat. "Call me by my Christian name—the same as these fellows."
"Derek—yes—and it's much prettier than Ted, or Nicky."
"So now, Mayne," said Nicky, "you are paid off handsomely, and at our expense."
It was a merry, not to say noisy breakfast party; Nancy with two long white wreaths round her neck (in a third she had invested her father), the wristlet watch on her mahogany wrist, was in the wildest spirits.
"I woke this morning very early," she said; "almost before the birds, not because I was expecting presents in my stocking,—like at Christmas time, but because I was going to be eighteen, and I seemed to hear the bamboos—you all know how they whisper—murmuring to one another, 'Eighteen, eighteen, eighteen!'"