Gyp would have liked nothing better; but, for that, one must
not have a house with three servants, several meals, two puppy-dogs, and
no great experience of how to deal with any of them.
She spoke of her difficulties to no one and suffered the more. With
Betty--who, bone-conservative, admitted Fiorsen as hardly as she had
once admitted Winton--she had to be very careful. But her great trouble
was with her father. Though she longed to see him, she literally dreaded
their meeting. He first came--as he had been wont to come when she was
a tiny girl--at the hour when he thought the fellow to whom she now
belonged would most likely be out. Her heart beat, when she saw him
under the trellis. She opened the door herself, and hung about him so
that his shrewd eyes should not see her face. And she began at once to
talk of the puppies, whom she had named Don and Doff. They were perfect
darlings; nothing was safe from them; her slippers were completely
done for; they had already got into her china-cabinet and gone to sleep
there! He must come and see all over.
Hooking her arm into his, and talking all the time, she took him
up-stairs and down, and out into the garden, to the studio, or
music-room, at the end, which had an entrance to itself on to a back
lane. This room had been the great attraction. Fiorsen could practice
there in peace. Winton went along with her very quietly, making a shrewd
comment now and then.
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