"George, what an epidemic of girls!" groaned Lance, as soon as Tommy and her brood were out of sight. "Those poor Coopers! As if their own great, ugly five were not enough, but they must take on another to make the half-dozen!"
"It is an act of true kindness," replied Helston. "For a man with five daughters of his own to make room for another, shows him to be extremely conscientious."
"The little cousin," critically said Lance, "has something fetching about her. Nothing to look at, but one is conscious of a personality."
"I never look at her," said Millie's friend, "but those lines occur to my mind—
"The good stars met in your horoscope
Made you of spirit, fire and dew."
"I don't know about the dew; she's a skinny little wisp," was the uncivil comment.
"Wait till she grows up," said Millie's champion. "You would wonder there was anything left of her if you knew what she has come through. But I gave her my word, so I mustn't tell you; and after all," he added, musing, "I don't wonder that the vicar doesn't want the tale to get about; it's not a pretty story, and I daresay would do the child no good in a narrow-minded, provincial circle."
"I can't think how she will get on with those Coopers," remarked Burmester. "Did you ever see such raw material? And you heard what my mater said at lunch? They are such hide-bound, pragmatical—no doing anything with them. The vicar quietly goes his way, listening to nobody's wishes—thinks himself infallible. The pater has given him up as a bad job; says you might as well have a cabbage at the Vicarage! Hall, of Ilberston, is such a good chap! He might give this Southerner many a hint. But the Coopers won't have a word to say to him, because he has a weekly Eucharist, and makes the schoolchildren attend."
Helston listened with sinkings of the heart. This did not sound like a household in which Melicent would be happy. But report is often one-sided. He determined to judge for himself.