atter like a magpie if her father were
in the mood, but quick to note if he were not, and then quite content to
be silently beside him, perhaps for hours. They understood each other
perfectly. Norah never could make out the people who pitied her for
having no friends of her own age. How could she possibly be bothered
with children, she reflected, when she had Daddy?

As for Norah's education, that was of the kind best defined as a minus
quantity.

"I won't have her bothered with books too early," Mr. Linton had said
when nurse hinted, on Norah's eight birthday, that it was time she began
the rudiments of learning. "Time enough yet--we don't want to make a
bookworm of her!"

Whereat nurse smiled demurely, knowing that that was the last thing to
be afraid of in connexion with her child. But she worried in her
responsible old soul all the same; and when a wet day or the occasional
absence of Mr. Linton left Norah without occupation, she induced her to
begin a few elementary lessons. The child was quick enough, and soon
learned to read fairly well and to write laboriously; but there nurse's
teaching from books ended.

Of other and practical teaching, however, she had a greater store. Mr.
Linton had a strong leaning towards the old-fashioned virtues, and it
was at a word from him that Norah had gone to the kitchen and asked Mrs.
Brown to teach her to cook. Mrs. Brown--fat, good-natured and
adoring--was all acquiescence, and by the time Norah was eleven she knew
more of cooking and general housekeeping than many girls grown up and
fancying themselves ready to undertake houses of their own. Moreover,
she could sew rather well, though she frankly detested the
accomplishment. The one form of work she cared for was knitting, and it
was her boast that her father wore only the socks she manufactured for
him.

Norah's one gentle passion was music. Never taught, she inherited from
her mother a natural instinct and an absolutely true ear, and before she
was seven she could strum on the old piano in a way very satisfying to
herself and awe-inspiring to the admiring nurse. Her talent increased
yearly, and at ten she could play anything she heard--from ear, for she
had never been taught a note of music. It was, indeed, her growing
capabilities in this respect that forced upon her father the need for
proper tuition for the child. However, a stopgap was found in the person
of the book-keeper, a young Englishman, who knew more of musi