build which makes a girl a childish feather-weight. Few girls retain
it after fourteen or fifteen. A wind might supposably have blown her
away, but one knew it would not, because she was firm and steady on
her small feet. Ordinary strength could have lifted her with one hand,
and would have been tempted to do it. She had a slim, round throat,
and the English daisy face it upheld caused it to suggest to the mind
the stem of a flower. The roundness of her cheek, in and out of which
totally unexpected dimples flickered, and the forget-me-not blueness
of her eyes, which were large and rather round also, made her look
like a nice baby of singularly serious and observing mind. She looked
at one as certain awe-inspiring things in perambulators look at one--
with a far and clear silence of gaze which passes beyond earthly
obstacles and reserves a benign patience with follies. Tembarom felt
interestedly that one really might quail before it, if one had
anything of an inferior quality to hide. And yet it was not a
critical gaze at all. She wore a black dress with a bit of white
collar, and she had so much soft, red hair that he could not help
recalling one or two women who owned the same quantity and seemed
able to carry it only as a sort of untidy bundle. Hers looked
entirely under control, and yet was such a wonder of burnished
fullness that it tempted the hand to reach out and touch it. It
became Tembarom's task during the meal to keep his eyes from turning
too often toward it and its owner.

If she had been a girl who took things hard, she might have taken her
father very hard indeed. But opinions and feelings being solely a
matter of points of view, she was very fond of him, and, regarding
him as a sacred charge and duty, took care of him as though she had
been a reverentially inclined mother taking care of a boisterous son.
When his roar was heard, her calm little voice always fell quietly on