do spring up!"

The remainder of Brock's day was spent in getting acquainted with his
family--or, rather, his _ménage_. There were habits and foibles, demands
and restrictions, that he had to adapt himself to with unvarying
benignity. He made a friend of Raggles without half trying; dogs always
took to him, he admitted modestly. Tootles was less vulnerable. She
howled consistently at each of his first half-dozen advances; his
courage began to wane with shocking rapidity; his next half-hearted
advances were in reality inglorious retreats. Spurred on by the
sustaining Constance, he stood by his guns and at last was gratified to
see faint signs of surrender. By midday he had conquered. Tootles
permitted him to carry her up and down the station platform (she was too
young to realise the risk she ran). Edith and Constance, with the
beaming nurse and O'Brien, applauded warmly when he returned from his
first promenade, bearing Tootles and proudly heeled by Raggles. Fond
mothers in the crowd of hurrying travellers found time to look upon him
and smile as if to say, "What a nice man!" He could almost hear them
saying it. Which, no doubt, accounted for the intense ruddiness of his
cheeks.

"Do you ever spank her?" he demanded once of Mrs. Medcroft, after
Tootles had brought tears to his eyes with a potent attack upon his
nose. She caught the light of danger in his grey eyes and hastily
snatched the offending Tootles from his arms.

Miss Fowler kept him constantly at work with his eyeglass and his
English, neither of which he was managing well enough to please her
critical estimate. In fact, he laboured all day with the persistence, if
not the sullenness, of a hard-driven slave. He did not have time to