She complied with ready obedience, though the roses left her cheeks. “There,” said Tod, loosing the dog, and letting her pat him at leisure, “see how gentle he is; how affectionately he looks up at you!”
“Please not to think me very silly!” she pleaded earnestly, as though beseeching pardon for a sin. “I have never been used to dogs. We do not keep dogs in France. At least very few people do. Oh dear!”
Something that she carried in her left hand wrapped in paper had dropped on to the lawn. Don pounced upon it. “Oh, please take it from him! please, please!” she cried in terror. Tod laughed, and extricated the little parcel.
“It has some valuable old lace in it of Mrs. Todhetley’s,” she explained as she thanked him. “I am taking it home to mend.”
“You mend old lace famously, I hear,” said Tod, as we walked with her to the entrance gate.
“Yes, I think I do it nearly as well as the nuns who taught me.”
“Have you been in a convent?”
“Only for my education. I was an externe—a daily pupil. My aunt lived next door to it. I went every morning at eight o’clock and returned home at six in the evening to supper.”
“Did you get no dinner?” asked Tod.