lodgekeeper and his wife stood, cap in hand,
bowing and curtseying. Mr.Lamplugh smiled
and waved his hand, calling to them by their
names, as he asked after the pigs and the
bairns quite naturally and unaffectedly.

"A little cordiality does no harm," he
remarked good-humouredly.

"You think not, Mr. Lamplugh? I fear
that is rather a dangerous and democratic
sentiment." Lady Albinia said it with the
air of a preacher confuting an atheist.

Before he had time to answer, the carriage
drove up to the hall door. On the steps, stood
four young figures: the eldest a girl of about
eighteen or nineteen, with her three young
brothers. In a badly ironed printed gown,
far too short  and scanty for the mode, the
waist very short, and the boddice exceedingly
clumsy: in thick-soled shoes, which she yet
considered dress (the shoemaker of the little
town called them dancing pumps): with long
black hair hanging to her waist in ringlets,
and which looked as if it had never been cut
or turned up: there was not a fashion about
Daisy that was not essentially and wholly
incorrect.  And yet she was beautiful enough
to have gained pardon for even a more
eccentric costume.  Large full eyes, dark
as the night and bright as its stars, a
pale olive coloured complexion, with a flood of
brilliant crimson on her cheeks, a wide and
handsome mouth, broader in the lips and
more flexible than Anglo-Saxon mouths;
teeth that were like pearls, small,
regular, and white—a broad forehead, and a
face that was one flush of youth and joy, one
laugh of gladness, one bright gleam of
innocence and pleasure all over; a loud voice; but
clear and cheery, welcoming the new mamma
frankly, and crying out "Dear, dear papa!"
as the large but well-formed hands unloosed
themselves from the little brothers to clasp
round his neck.  Such a being might have
struck an open way at once to the heart
of any woman not mummified by the world;
but she worked no charm in the Lady Albinia
who was mummified by the world.

My lady only thought her wild and
untutored and sadly lacking manners.  The three
young boys were somewhat like their sister.
All had long black hair falling on their shoulders,
bright wild eyes, wide lips that always
smiled—all were dark in skin, loud and clear
in voice, free in action: all looked foreign,
though it woudl have taken a good ethnologist
to say of what race they were.  The garden was
a wilderness of lowers and shrubs.
Rhododendrons, roses, azaleas, laurels, all interlaced
among each other, while the flower-beds were
a mass of blossoms without order or division.
For the first few moments as she sat there in
her London carriage, dressed in her London
fashions, all that the Lady Albinia saw
was a mass of green leaves and crimson
flowers, streaming hair, roving eyes, loud
voices, and an air of energy and freedom,
and unchecked life about everything animate
or inanimate, from the tangled shrubberies
to the big dog barking merrily.

"Good heavens, they are gipsies!" thought
the Lady Albinia, shuddering, and pressing
her scented pocket-handkerchief, heavy with
embroidery, against her lips. For she felt
almost faint.

Who or what they were, or rather who had
been their mother, or what the history
of her life, she never rightly understood—
Mr. Lamplugh would never speak of his
first wife. It was the one sole subject on
which he showed any spirit, or in which he
dared to oppose her. She could only guess
that the picture of a beautiful girl in Arab
costume, standing with her head across the
neck of a white horse, which hung up in
Daisy's room, was Daisy's mother. Partly
because of the likeness to Daisy and the boys,
and partly because of the wild flowers always
fresh around the frame, so that it looked
framed in flowers—the gilt entirely hidden
—while a large bouquet was always on the
table beneath.  Lady Albinia supposed that
this was some absurd manifestation of savage
affection, in which supposition she was
perfectly correct.  That young Bedouin girl had
been the English merchant's wife; the white
horse had carried her through the desert to
die worn out, on reaching Bagdab, where she
herself had died, of remorse and restraint as much
as of disease, after having given birth to
those four children.  Rather a contrast this
passionate tale of love and beauty, and the
wild nature pining under the restraits of
civilisation, to the thorough-bred lady of
London society, marrying for money and a
settlement.

The Lamplugh children had lived the
wildest of lives at Todcroft.  Out all day l
ong, and sometimes half the summer nights;
living in the woods, and on the fells, and on
the lake; Daisy always with her brothers,
the boldest rider and the hardiest mountaineer
of them all; their food mostly bread, milk
and a mess which not every lady in her own
right has heard of, called porridge, with very
little meat, and vast quantities of fruit and
vegetables; scorning all sorts of conventionalities,
though the soul of politeness to
each other and to all the world, because
considerate and unselfish; dressing in the
most primitive fashion—Daisy without stays
in a round felt hat, thick boots, short
petticoats, and very rarely gloves.  The boys
in anything that came first to hand, quick
and clever, but clever in odd out-of-the-way
things—clever in natural history, in botany,
in biography, and in all artistic tastes; singing
beautifully though untaught, but clear
and true as wood-birds, and drawing with
exceeding grace and feeling, but knowing
nothing of grammar, nor of classics, nor of
arithmetic.  Daisy unable to work as well as
a charity school-girl; but knowing the names
of every flower on the fells and fields, and
the habits of every English birth north