Isobel.

"Because no one else ever cared enough for me to kiss me, except Mrs.
Parsons, and she has given it up now that the other boys are here."

"Does not your father kiss you?" she asked.

"Yes, once a week, on Sunday evening when I go to bed. Because I don't
count that."

"No, I understand," said Isobel, thinking of her own father, then added
hastily, "it must be sad not to have a mother."

"It is," he answered, "especially when one is ill as I have been, and
must lie so long in bed with pains in the head. You know I had an
abscess in the ear and it hurt very much."

"I didn't know. We heard you were ill and mother wanted to come to see
you. Father wouldn't let her. He thought it might be measles and he is
afraid of catching things."

"Yes," replied Godfrey without surprise. "It wasn't measles, but if it
had been you might have caught them, so of course he was right to be
careful."

"Oh! he wasn't thinking of me or Mummy, he was thinking of himself,"
blurted out Isobel with the candour of youth.

"Big, strong men don't catch measles," said Godfrey in mild
astonishment.

"He says they do, and that they are very dangerous when you are grown
up. Why are you alone here, and what are you working at?"

"My father has kept me in as a punishment because I did my sums wrong.
The other boys have gone out bird-nesting, but I have to stop here
until I get them right. I don't know when that will be," he added with
a sigh, "as I hate rule of three and can't do it."

"Rule of three," said Isobel, "I'm quite good at it. You see I like
figures. My father says it is the family business instinct. Here, let
me try. Move to the other side of that big chair, there's plenty of
room for two, and show it to me."

He obeyed with alacrity and soon the brown head and the fair one were
bent together over the scrawled sheet. Isobel, who had really a budding
talent for mathematics, worked out the sum, or rather the sums, without
difficulty and then, with guile acquired under the governess regime,
made him copy them and destroyed all traces of her own handiwork.

"Are you as stupid at everything as you are at sums?" she asked when he
had finished, rising from the chair and seating herself on the edge of
the table.

"What a rude thing to ask! Of course not," he replied indignantly. "I
am very good at Latin and history, which I like. But you see father
doesn't care much for them. He was a Wrangler, you know."

"A Wrangler! How