Queenie wondered if it were her fancy, that a vague uneasiness pervaded the man's gait at times. In spite of his cheerfulness and hearty laugh there were hints of past or present troubles in the worn lines round the kindly eyes; even in the midst of their pleasant talk a shadow now and then crossed his face, as though some unwelcome remembrance obtruded itself.
Strange to say, there was little or no resemblance between the child and him.
Nan was evidently a character.
She sat perched on her father's knee in her little white pelisse and sun-bonnet, with a large woolly lamb in her arms, staring at Queenie with great dark eyes.
Queenie noticed that now and then one small hand would furtively touch her father's coat-sleeve, and she would stroke the rough grey tweed with a look of infinite contentment, but showed no impatience or weariness during the long discussion that followed the girls' entrance.
"Is my little mouse tired? is not Nan very tired?" said Mr. Chester, at last stooping to peep under the sun-bonnet.
Queenie caught the look, and then she said to herself, "That little bright-eyed child is his idol."
"Nan is not so very tired, father," pronounced the little creature with a slight lisp, and a stress on the word, very; "a little, only a very little."
"Then we will go, my pet; say good-bye to Langley," and Nan obediently slid down from her father's knee, and trotted with sturdy compactness across the room.
Queenie stood with the sisters in the porch and watched them cross the tiny moat under the dark sycamores, Nan wrapt up in a grey rug, and seated comfortably in her little chair-saddle on the back of an old white pony, her white lamb still hugged in her arms, her father holding the reins, and mounted on a handsome brown mare. "Nan has found her voice now; do you hear how she is chattering to him, Langley?" observed Cathy in an amused voice. "How those two dote on each other! No wonder Gertrude is jealous, the child cares nothing for her mother; but then Gertrude is too selfish to make a fuss over any one but herself."