! As sure as God made little apples, trouble
and disgrace will follow jumpers!"

Mrs. Dixon, no less than Evans, disapproved of those who changed their
religion, but this denunciation did not seem to her to apply.

"That poor child's no jumper!" she called after her antagonist;
"'twasn't his fault he was born the way he was!"

Evans slammed the door.

Mrs. Dixon dismissed the controversy from her easy mind, looked at the
clock, and laid down her knitting.

"Miss Christian'll be looking for her birthday cake!" she said to
herself, hoisting her large person from her chair. Even as she did so,
there came a rapping, quick and urgent, at the window. "Look at that
now!" said Mrs. Dixon. "I wouldn't doubt that child to be wanting the
world in her pocket before it was made!"

"Dixie! Dixie! Open the window! Hurry! I want you!"

Christian's face, surmounted by a very old hunting-cap, and decorated
with a corked moustache, appeared at the window.

"The Lord save us, child! What have you done to yourself? And what are
you doing out there in the wet?" answered Mrs. Dixon, reprovingly;
"sure the cake won't be baked for ten minutes yet."

"I don't want the cake. I only want some biscuits, _please_.
Dixie, and hurry! Amazon's bolted, and Cottingham's asked _me_ to
catch her! If you _had_ a bone, Dixie, she'd simply--"

Mrs. Dixon was gone. She disapproved exceedingly of Christian's role
as kennel-boy, but as, since Christian's first birthday, she had never
refused her anything, she was not prepared on her tenth to break so
well-established a habit.

"I dunno in the world why Mr. Cottingham should make a young lady like
you do his business!" she said, putting the requisition bait into
Christian's eager, up-stretched hands, "and if your Mamma could see
you--"

"Oh, well done, Dixie! What a lovely bone! Oh, thank you most
awfully!" interrupted Christian, snatching at the dainties provided,
and flitting away through the grey veils of the rain, a preposterous
little figure, clad in a ragged kennel-coat, that had been long since
discarded by the huntsman, a pair of couples slung round her neck, and
a crop in her hand.

It was a chilly, wet August afternoon. It had rained for the past
three days, and was, by all appearances, prepared to continue to do so
for three more. Christian ran across the fields to the kennels,
regardless of wet overhead or underfoot, and oblivious of the corked
moustache, which ran too, almost as fast