e a dash over the open and cross the
road, and hoping for the rare delight of seeing a hare. And the tame
red and fallow deer looked at her suspiciously from a distance, as if
she might turn into a motor-car. In those morning walks she did not
again see his lips forming words that frightened her, and she began to
be quite sure that he had stopped swearing to himself because she had
spoken to him so seriously.

Once he looked at her so long and with so much earnestness that she
asked him what he was thinking of, and he gently pushed back the
broad-brimmed hat she wore, so as to see her forehead and beautiful
golden hair.

'You are growing very like your mother,' he said, after a little
while.

They had stopped in the broad drive, and little Ida gazed gravely up
at him for a moment. Then she put up her arms.

'I think I want to give you a kiss, Mr. Van Torp,' she said with the
utmost gravity. 'You're so good to me.'

Mr. Van Torp stooped, and she put her arms round his short neck and
kissed the hard, flat cheek once, and he kissed hers rather awkwardly.

'Thank you, my dear,' he said, in an odd voice, as he straightened
himself.

He took her hand again to walk on, and the great iron mouth was drawn
a little to one side, and it looked as if the lips might have trembled
if they had not been so tightly shut. Perhaps Mr. Van Torp had never
kissed a child before.

She was very happy and contented, for she had spent most of her life
in a New England village alone with Miss More, and the great English
country-house was full of wonder and mystery for her, and the park was
certainly the Earthly Paradise. She had hardly ever been with other
children and was rather afraid of them, because they did not always
understand what she said, as most grown people did; so she was not at
all lonely now. On the contrary, she felt that her small existence
was ever so much fuller than before, since she now loved two people
instead of only one, and the two people seemed to agree so well
together. In America she had only seen Mr. Van Torp at intervals, when
he had appeared at the cottage near Boston, the bearer of toys and
chocolates and other good things, and she had not been told till after
she had landed in Liverpool that she was to be taken to stop with him
in the country while he remained in England. Till then he had always
called her 'Miss Ida,' in an absurdly formal way, but ever since she
had arrived at Oxley Paddox he had droppe