half a term," her father reflected. "Six months there did wonders
for Alix. No use precipitating things--the next few years are
pretty important for all the girls. We mustn't let her fancy that
the first man who turns her head with compliments is the right
partner for life! Alix, now--somehow she wasn't like Cherry, at
eighteen."

He smiled at a sudden memory of Alix, who was chicken-farming at
that age, and generally unpleasantly redolent of incubators,
chopped feed, and mire. He seemed to remember Alix shouting that
if Peter Joyce was going to LIVE in their house, she would move
somewhere else! Cherry was different.

Cherry, he reflected fearfully, was as pretty as her mother had
been at eighteen, with the same rounded chin and apricot cheeks,
and the same shadowed innocent blue eyes with a film of corn-
coloured hair blown across them. She had the strange, the
indefinable quality that without words, almost without glances,
draws youth toward youth, draws admiration and passion, draws life
and all its pain. Her father for the first time to-night
formulated in his heart the thought that she might be happily
married--

Married--nonsense! Why, what did she know of life, of submission
and courage and sacrifice? At the first strain, at the first real
test, she would want to run home to her Daddy again, to "stop
playing"--! It would be years, many years, before the snowy
frills, and the pale gold head, and the firm, brown little hand
would be ready for that!