"Because we expect great things of her," he continued, squeezing his
daughter's arm and releasing her. "But about you now." They sat down
side by side on the little sofa. "Did you leave the children well?
They'll be ready for school, I suppose. Do they take after you or
Ambrose? They've got good heads on their shoulders, I'll be bound?"

At this Helen immediately brightened more than she had yet done, and
explained that her son was six and her daughter ten. Everybody said that
her boy was like her and her girl like Ridley. As for brains, they were
quick brats, she thought, and modestly she ventured on a little story
about her son,--how left alone for a minute he had taken the pat of
butter in his fingers, run across the room with it, and put it on
the fire--merely for the fun of the thing, a feeling which she could
understand.

"And you had to show the young rascal that these tricks wouldn't do,
eh?"

"A child of six? I don't think they matter."

"I'm an old-fashioned father."

"Nonsense, Willoughby; Rachel knows better."

Much as Willoughby would doubtless have liked his daughter to praise
him she did not; her eyes were unreflecting as water, her fingers still
toying with the fossilised fish, her mind absent. The elder people went
on to speak of arrangements that could be made for Ridley's comfort--a
table placed where he couldn't help looking at the sea, far from