"But you must go now," Louie said by-an-by.
"But I can come in the morning?"
"Yes. And, daddy——"
"You'll be good to poor old Chaff? He's fond of me too."
Buck promised that he would. Had there been none other, the tantrums of the Honourable Emily were no doubt bond enough between them.
The next morning Buck had to be told that eight o'clock was too early for a visit, and so, on the next morning again, he did not turn up until eleven. After that eleven became his accustomed hour. Wet or fine was the same to him, and he cancelled all afternoon orders for the trap; his little girl must have the trap at her disposal for a daily drive. And because his fidelity to the Social Order and their own professional tolerances amounted in Louie's case to pretty much the same thing, the nurses one and all fell in love with Buck.
And here, once for all, or at any rate for a long time, a cogent matter may be dismissed, even as those pagan nurses dismissed it. It is Louie's conviction of moral guilt as apart from her persuasion of the practical inconveniences of it. Louie Causton would have been poor stuff for the hot gospeller to practise upon. There were things she would have had undone, and that not merely because the consequences pressed upon her; as they could not be undone, she had begun the tune and intended to fiddle it out. What she saw fit to hide her historian hides also. Louie seized what happiness she could, and it served. She was sorrier for Chaff than she was for herself. She would have been less happy had she taken Uncle Augustus's way out.
And whether the days were happy or not, at any rate they were peacefully alike. Breakfast with the nurses, a morning or afternoon drive with Buck or a walk along the river bank or on Putney Heath, tea (if they drove) perhaps at Kingston, supper with the nurses again, and bed—that was the tale of them. She kept her promise to Chaff; several times he came to see her. Twice he met Buck. At these meetings the shade of the Honourable Emily almost visibly presided.... Chaff tried to talk of "Lives and Battles," Buck of the same—it was not for him to choose topics before his betters. And once, but once only, Buck brought Mrs. Buck, formerly Susan Emmidge, the chemist's servant at Mallard Bois. He hooked her up behind himself before they left Kingston, and Louie did her the same service at the end of the visit. For the rest, if Louie wanted to see her father's second wife she had to go to the Molyneux Arms to do so.
II