"Well, well," said Harold, patting her curly head; "I'll finish this
time, but not again, Dora. Next time, Aunt Lucy will be so good as
to see to it. After old Betty's eyes grew bad we had to do our own
needling."

I confess it was a wonderful performance--quite as neat as Colman
could have made it; and I suspect that Harold did not refrain from
producing needle and thread from his fat miscellaneous pocket-book,
and repairing her many disasters before they reached the domestic
eye; for there was a chronic feud between Dora and Colman, and the
attempts of the latter to make the child more like a young lady were
passionately repelled, though she would better endure those of a
rough little under-housemaid, whose civilisation was, I suppose, not
quite so far removed from her own.

On Sunday, she and Harold disappeared as soon as breakfast was over,
and only Eustace remained, spruce beyond all imagination, and giving
himself childlike credit for not being with them; but when at church
I can't say much for his behaviour. He stared unblushingly,
whispered remarks and inquiries, could not find the places in his
book, and appeared incapable of kneeling. Our little church at
Arghouse was then a chapelry, with merely Sunday morning service by a
curate from Mycening, and the congregation a village one, to the
disgust of Eustace, who had expected to review his neighbours, and
thought his get-up thrown away.

"No one at all to see," he observed with discontent over our
luncheon, Harold and Dora having returned from roaming over Kalydon
Moor.