She clung to him eagerly. "Oh, Daddy, thank you! Thank you! Do you know--it's funny--Scott used to call me Cinderella!"
Bathurst crooked his brows quizzically. "How original of him! This Scott seems to be quite a wonderful person. And what was your pet name for him I wonder, eh, sly-boots?"
She laughed in evident embarrassment. There was something implied in her father's tone that made her curiously reluctant to discuss her hero. And yet, in justification of the man himself, she felt she must say something.
"His brother and sister call him--Stumpy," she said, "because he is little and he limps. But I--" her face was as red as the hunting-coat against which it nestled--"I called him--Mr. Greatheart. He is--just like that."
Mr. Bathurst laughed again, tweaking her ear. "Altogether an extraordinary family!" he commented. "I must meet this Mr. Stumpy Greatheart. Now suppose you run upstairs and turn on the hot water. And when you've done that, you can take my boots down to the kitchen to dry. And mind you don't fall foul of your mother, for she strikes me as being a bit on the ramp tonight!"
He kissed her again, and she clung to him very fast for a moment or two, tasting in that casual, kindly embrace all the home joy she had ever known.
Then, hearing her mother's step, she swiftly and guiltily disengaged herself and fled up the stairs like a startled bird. As she prepared his bath for him, the wayward thought came to her that if only he and she had lived alone together, she would never have wanted to get married at all--even for the delight of being Lady Studley instead of "poor little Dinah Bathurst!"