"You live there?"
"Yes."
Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically remote from Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness of the Scarisbricks. But Putney was near. To keep himself in spring and condition, he frequently walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could walk to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings' bus. And they rowed the boat race there. Therefore, while it outraged all Order that a Scarisbrick should live there, that fact nevertheless brought his daughter into the same world with himself. For the first time he looked seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more quickly than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her had beguiled his fancy through the years.
This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with head back, lips parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her whole pose an appeal.
"Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through those rare things, her tears——
Judson came out of the stable. Buck gave him a curt order, and the trap moved away. Its departure left Louie standing by the little bench outside the stable door. Buck had taken a step towards her. He was murmuring something quite ridiculous—something about "strictly for the gentry." Perhaps he remembered that had his little girl been a little boy he would have given her instruction for nothing at the Sparring Academy in Bruton Street.
All in a moment he passed his arm about Louie. Scarisbrick or not, she was going to be a Causton and his for once—just for once. In an hour he might be calling her "m'm" again, but just for once—his face was beautiful.
"That little girl," he said foolishly, holding her with as gentle a fear as if she had been still in her cradle.
Louie's answer was to faint suddenly on his breast.
But of the Molyneux Arms in a moment. A word about Mortlake Road first.