moulded his policy with regard to his girl's upbringing. If she was
to be indeed his son as well as his daughter, she must from the first
be accustomed to boyish as well as to girlish ways. This, in that
she was an only child, was not a difficult matter to accomplish. Had
she had brothers and sisters, matters of her sex would soon have
found their own level.

There was one person who objected strongly to any deviation from the
conventional rule of a girl's education. This was Miss Laetitia
Rowly, who took after a time, in so far as such a place could be
taken, that of the child's mother. Laetitia Rowly was a young aunt
of Squire Rowly of Norwood; the younger sister of his father and some
sixteen years his own senior. When the old Squire's second wife had
died, Laetitia, then a conceded spinster of thirty-six, had taken
possession of the young Margaret. When Margaret had married Squire
Norman, Miss Rowly was well satisfied; for she had known Stephen
Norman all her life. Though she could have wished a younger
bridegroom for her darling, she knew it would be hard to get a better
man or one of more suitable station in life. Also she knew that
Margaret loved him, and the woman who had never found the happiness
of mutual love in her own life found a pleasure in the romance of
true love, even when the wooer was middle-aged. She had been
travelling in the Far East when the belated news of Margaret's death
came to her. When she had arrived home she announced her intention
of taking care of Margaret's child, just as she had taken care of
Margaret. For several reasons this could not be done in the same
way. She was not old enough to go and live at Normanstand without
exciting comment; and the Squire absolutely refused to allow that his
daughter should live anywhere except in his own house. Educational
supervision, exercised at such distance and so intermittently, could