“What a dear little lap-dog!” said one.

“Yes, I’ve been wanting to pat its head for a long time,” said another.

“Warranted not to bite,” laughed a third.  “Can it really be full-grown?”

“Oh, no doubt, my dear!  Look at its pretty little whiskers!  It’s just a toy, you know, nothing but a toy.”

Dinah turned in her chair, and gazed scathingly upon the group of critics.  Then, aware of the Colonel’s eyes upon her, she turned back and gave him a swift look of apology.

He shook his head at her repressively, his whole air magisterial and condemnatory.  “You may go if you wish,” he said, in the tone of one dismissing an offender.  “But be good enough to bear in mind what I have said to you!”

Billy leapt to his feet.  “Can I go too, sir?” he asked eagerly.

The Colonel signified majestic assent.  His mood was very far from genial that morning, and he had not the smallest desire to detain either of them.  In fact, if he could have dismissed his two young charges altogether, he would have done so with alacrity.  But that unfortunately was out of the question—­unless by their behaviour they provoked him to fulfil the very definite threat that he had pronounced to Dinah in the privacy of his wife’s room an hour before.

He was very seriously displeased with Dinah, more displeased than he had been with anyone since his soldiering days, and he had expressed himself with corresponding severity.  If she could not conduct herself becomingly and obediently, he would take them both straight home again and thus put a summary end to temptation.  His own daughter had never given him any cause for uneasiness, and he did not see why he should be burdened with the escapades of anyone else’s troublesome offspring.  It was too much to expect at his time of life.

So a severe reprimand had been Dinah’s portion, to which she, very meek and crestfallen, shorn of all the previous evening’s glories, had listened with a humility that had slightly mollified her judge though he had been careful not to let her know it.  She had been wild and flighty, and he was determined that she should feel the rod of discipline pretty smartly.

But when he finally rose from the table and stalked out of the room, it was a little disconcerting to find the culprit awaiting him in the vestibule to slip a shy hand inside his arm and whisper, “Do forgive me!  I’m so sorry.”

He looked down into her quivering face, saw the pleading eyes swimming in tears, and abruptly found that his displeasure had evaporated so completely that he could not even pretend to be angry any longer.  He had never taken much notice of Dinah before, treating her, as did his wife and daughter, as a mere child and of no account.  But now he suddenly realized that she was an engaging minx after all.

“Ashamed of yourself?” he asked gruffly, his white moustache twitching a little.

Dinah nodded mutely.