“Although I can’t make her out,” he often said to himself, “I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my seven daughters put together.”
As Flower and David had been sent from Australia especially to be under the care and guidance of Mrs. Maybright, the Doctor felt more and more uncertain as to the expediency of keeping the children.
“It is difficult enough to manage a girl like Polly,” he said to himself; “but when another girl comes to the house who is equally audacious and untamed—for my Polly is an untamed creature when all’s said and done—how is a poor half-blind old doctor like myself to keep these two turbulent spirits in order? I am dreadfully afraid the experiment won’t work; and yet—and yet £400 a year is sadly needed to add to the family purse just now.”
The Doctor was pacing up and down his library while he meditated. The carpet in this part of the room was quite worn from the many times he walked up and down it. Like many another man, when he was perplexed or anxious he could not keep still. There came a light tap at the library door.
“Come in!” said the Doctor; and to his surprise Flower, looking more like a tall yellow daffodil than ever, in a soft dress of creamy Indian silk, opened the door and took a step or two into the room.
She looked half-shy, half-bold—a word would have sent her flying, or a word drawn her close to the kind Doctor’s side.
“Come here, my little girl,” he said, “and tell me what you want.”
Flower would have hated any one else to speak of her as a little girl, but she pushed back her hair now, and looked with less hesitation and more longing at the Doctor.
“I thought you’d be here—I ventured to come,” she said.
“Yes, yes; there’s no venturing in the matter. Take my arm, and walk up and down with me.”