Devereux
disapprove to the point of keeping her room; but Sanchia, with front
serene, moved from office-table to kitchen, to the garden, to the home-
farm, interviewed Mrs. Benson, consulted with the stockman, pored--her
head close to Clyde's--over seed-pans and melon borders, was keenly
interested, judicial, reflective, pleading, coaxing by turns--seemed, in
fact, not to have a perplexity in her fair head. Her health was superb,
she never had an ache nor failed of an appetite. To see her sitting in the
stable-yard on a sunny morning, her lap full of nozzling fox-hound pups,
was to have a vision of Artemis Eileithyia. So, it seemed, the grave
mother-hound, erect on haunches, with wise ears, and sidelong eyes showing
the white, knew her certainly to be. Beside and over her stood Frodsham of
the stables, and his underlings, firmly her friends.
She looked up, beaming. "Oh, Frodsham; aren't they sweet? One of them
tries to suck my finger. What are you going to call them? I do hope you
mean to keep them all."
"I doubt they're too many for the old bitch, Miss Percival. She'll not
feed the lot of them. We'll be wise to duck the latest cast."
"Oh, no,--please. I'll feed it--I will, really.
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