In the comfortable ugly house in Princes' Park, besides Godfrey and Mrs. Craven, and the two servants, there was a child who afterwards developed into the Kate O'Neill of these memoirs. Godfrey O'Neill brought her home on the last visit he made to West Africa. She was then aged, at a theoretical reckoning, three years, and she was more fluent in the Okky tongue than in English. She had never worn shoes till Godfrey bought her a pair in Las Palmas on the voyage home.
"Is she white?" Mrs. Craven had asked.
"White, clean through," Godfrey had assured her.
"Then who are her people?"
"That I shall not tell even you. Her mother is dead. Her father has gone under. He was a very clever man once, though I must say he used to be more high and mighty than I cared about on the rare occasions that I met him. But, as I say, he's gone under, hopelessly."
"And presently," said Mrs. Craven, "when we get this little wild thing tamed, and clothed, and teach her to speak English and go to church, up will come some drunken reprobate to take her away again."
"No, he won't. I've fixed that. He'll never claim her again. To start with he doesn't know if she's in England, or Canada, or Grand Canary. I even changed the name he called her by. I called her Kate from the day I left him, and had her christened by that name in Sierra Leone on the off chance she hadn't been christened before. And to go on with, he gave me his word of honor that if I took her away, he'd never embarrass me by inquiring for her again. You see, he was living as a native, and the child was running about with the other pickaninnies in the village, and I guess I made him pretty well ashamed of himself by what I said. The mother's dead, you know."
"Poof," said Mrs. Craven, "he promised you, did he? And what do you suppose the word of a man like that is worth?" (The late Craven had, it will be remembered, his strong failings.)
"Ninety-nine beach combers out of a hundred will lie as soon as look at you," Godfrey owned. "This one is the exception. He will keep his word, at any rate on this matter. He's just as proud as a king."
"Between drinks," suggested the widow.