"'I can't get out--I can't get out!' cried the starling," which isn't
in any prayer book of course, save the prayer book of a woman's
imprisoned heart.

She was in the kitchen garden one morning just beside the gatehouse
showing Bele for the thousandth time how to trench the peas without
burying them, when a crumpled old man in a rough cap with a basket
under his arm, limped through the gate.

"I want to see Major Trenton--" he said firmly.

Felicia turned. No one ever came to see the Major any more. Not even
Certain Legal Matters since the time of the Major's fall. Felicia had
signed many papers at his last visit some three years before and since
then no one had bothered the Major.

"You'll have to see me," answered Felicia, coolly, "Bele, not--so--
deep! You're smothering them--what is your business?"

The man took off his cap, he put down his basket and knelt to open it
and out popped the littlest, drollest fluff of a spaniel that ever
frisked.

"Oh, oh!" cried Felicia softly and dropped to her knees. "Oh, oh, it's
a little Babiche! Oh Zeb! Zeb! To think I didn't see who you were--"

And they walked across the paved door-yard with the tears in their
eyes and Felicia took him in to Margot and brought him soup and fed
the wee doggie and fluttered about like a wild young thing instead of
a sedate person of twenty-seven.