"Well, you will have an opportunity, for he has actually promised to come to St. Jude's before the new year—that is, provided you will promise me beforehand never to invite him either to dinner or tea. He's awfully shy of women, and we'll have to humor him with regard to all his little pet weaknesses."
"But I want really to get to know him," said Cecil.
"Well, perhaps you will if you are careful. You must just make his acquaintance without seeming to make it. If once he caught sight of a girl like Matilda, he would fly the place—I know he would. Now, that Irish girl, Kate—what do you call her?"
"Kate O'Connor."
"Kate O'Connor, well, she'd be just his sort; he'd compare her to one of his Greek heroines, Iphigenia or Persephone. He doesn't mind thinking of women, and even talking of them, if he can compare them to Greeks, but the modern English sort! oh, we will try to keep him from talking about them. He once saw you, Cecil; he said you had the patient sort of look which Penelope used to wear—that was his sole remark about you; he shut up his lips then, and rumpled his hair, and went to the stove to cook some bacon. By the way, he's the best cook I ever came across in all my life. I wish you could taste his toffee."
"Toffee!" cried Cecil. "Can Mr. Danvers stoop to toffee?"
"Oh, can't he? We were doing it up in the back bedroom. He caught us over it one night with a saucepan with a hole in the bottom—the smell was awful; the stuff was going through on to the fire. His whole face got scarlet; he rushed downstairs, and brought up a china-lined saucepan of his own. Teddy had to fly for half a pound of butter, a pound of moist sugar, and a quarter of a pound of almonds. He stood over that toffee until it was cooked to perfection, and then he poured it out on to a large tin, and the next day, when it was cold, he cut it up and gave it to us. He was more excited than any of us over it."
"I tell you what it is," said Molly; "Mr. Danvers shall make toffee for us—yes, for us—when he comes to St. Jude's; we'll manage it somehow."
"You must look like a Greek goddess, or he won't," said Maurice; "and I am not sure that you are quite the style."