raw out the look of
adoration from her soft bright eyes, which had something of the shyness
and wildness of the woodland creature. Terry had complained boyishly
that Stella ran away from him, was shy of his caresses. He had had to
take her by capture, he said, and his mother loved him none the less.
They were going to see Mrs. Wade. Stella was already friends with
Susan Horridge at the South lodge and with Georgie. She had heard much
of Mrs. Wade from them, and she pitied her loneliness, as she pitied
Susan's when Georgie was at school.

"Odd, isn't it, dear?" she asked in her soft deliberate voice: she had
lost or nearly lost the slightly foreign way of speaking she had had at
first. "Odd, isn't it, that those two natural recluses should have
found each other? The other day I was talking to Susan, when some one
shook the gate and there was a rattle of tins. I thought Susan would
have fainted. I had to go to the gate for her. It was only a
procession of tinkers, as Patsy calls them, and an impudent fellow
asked me if I wanted any pots or pans mended. I asked him did I look
like wanting any pots or pans mended, and he nodded his head towards
the lodge. 'The good woman of the house there might,' he said. 'She
keeps herself to herself. I never knew this gate locked before.' Poor
Susan asked me twenty questions about what the man looked like. I
think she was satisfied."

"We are going to bring Mrs. Wade a gift of a puppy," Lady O'Gara said.
"You shall select one from Judy's family, with the assistance of Patsy.
They are a good lot."

"I know the one she shall have," Stella said. "It is the one with a
few white hairs on his breast. Patsy says they'll be a patch as big as
a plate when he's older, and tells him he's a disgrace to the litter.
He's a darling, much nicer than the others. May I carry him, dear?"

"Won't he be rather heavy?"

"He can walk for little bits where it is dry. But he falls over his
great big puppy paws. I don't think there ever were such beautiful
dogs as your setters, not even my Poms or yours."

"I did think of asking you to give Mrs. Wade a Pom, but although they
are good watchdogs they would not afford such a sense of protection as
a setter. I hope she'll like a setter puppy just as well. We are very
proud of our setters. The old Shot strain is known everywhere. It has
been in the family for at least two hundred years."

Lady O'Gara could be very eloquent about the dog