“That pleases me—my brave little girls.” He went on into Mr. Dale’s chamber. 

 Left to themselves, they huddled together outside their father’s door, each trying to comfort the other. Peter Snooks, fully conscious that his young mistresses were in trouble, climbed into Julie’s lap and stuck his wet nose into her hand in true canine sympathy. Though they did not put it into words, both girls were conscious of a curious sense of remoteness from their father in being thus kept from him. This immediate, poignant grief stung them bitterly and prevented for the moment any thought of what the future might hold. 

 They never knew how long they had sat there on the stairs when Dr. Ware opened the bedroom door and beckoned them in. But they carried ever after a vivid impression of creeping stealthily to their father’s bed, stooping to kiss the dear face, from which there was no answering sign of recognition, and stealing softly out again. And in Julie’s mind there flashed always an 10 accompanying picture—the remembrance of how, when they had reached the hall again, Hester had picked up a woe-begone, shivering little dog, and burying her face in his neck, whispered, brokenly: “Oh, Peter Snooks, how we were going—to—make—him—laugh!” 

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11CHAPTER II

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 It was said of Mr. Dale by those of his friends’ wives who felt at liberty to discuss his affairs with their husbands, that his bringing up of his daughters was radically wrong. These whispers of feminine disapproval were occasionally wafted to the seemingly heedless father, who always smiled good-naturedly, yet was apparently blind to the advantages to be derived from the conventional course of training the young, for he continued to pursue his own methods with bland serenity. 

 Mrs. Dale had died when the girls were six and seven years old respectively. Up to that time they had lived quite like other children, going regularly to school and finding recreation in the pleasures common to their age and condition. The house in which at that time they lived was a somewhat pretentious mansion on the water side of Crana Street. Now to live in this sacred precinct, as every one in Radnor knows, gives an immediate claim to distinction. In the eyes of their neighbors, however, the Dales were not distinguished beyond the matter of their locality, 12 for the family was not Radnor-bred, and this is an offense tolerated but never condoned in Radnor society. 

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