“Did you send Dick for me, father?” she said, and her voice, like her face, betokened a refinement uncommon in a woodman’s daughter. “I was not far off, only at the pool to hear the frogs’ concert. Dick knows where to find me now, he comes straight to the pond, though he hates frogs’ music; don’t you, Dick?”
The dog rubbed his nose against her hand and wagged his tail, and the girl took her seat at the table.
To match face and voice, her mien and movements were graceful, and she handled the dinner-napkin like—a lady. It was just that, expressed in a word. The girl was not only beautiful—but a lady, in appearance, in tone, in bearing—and that, notwithstanding she wore a plain cotton gown in a woodman’s hut, and called the woodman “father.”
“You did not come by your usual path, father,” she said, turning from the deerhound, who sat on his haunches and rested his nose in her lap, quite content if her hand touched his head, say once during the meal.
“No, Una,” he replied, and though he called her by her Christian name, and without any prefix there was a subtle undertone in his voice and in his manner of addressing her, which seemed to infer something like respect. “No, I went astray.”
“And you were late,” she said. “Was anything the matter?” she added, turning her eyes upon him, with, for the first time, an air of interrogation.
“Matter? No,” he said, raising himself and coming to the table. “What should be? Yes, I came home by another path, and I don’t think you must come to meet me after dark, Una,” he added, with affected carelessness.
“No?” she asked, looking from one to the other with a smile of surprise. “Why not? Do you think I should get lost, or have you seen any wolves in Warden Forest, father? I know every path from end to end, and wolves have left merry England forever.”
“Not quite,” said Gideon, absently.
“Yes, quite,” and she laughed. “What Saxon king was it who offered fivepence for every wolf’s head? We were reading about it the other night, don’t you remember?”