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I rode over to Glenby the next morning after my paternal interview with Sara, intending to have a frank talk with Betty and lay the foundations of a good understanding on both sides. Betty was a sharp child, with a disconcerting knack of seeing straight through grindstones; she would certainly perceive and probably resent any underhanded management. I thought it best to tell her plainly that I was going to look after her.

When, however, I encountered Betty, tearing madly down the beech avenue with a couple of dogs, her loosened hair streaming behind her like a banner of independence, and had lifted her, hatless and breathless, up before me on my mare, I found that Sara had saved me the trouble of an explanation.

“Mother says you are going to take charge of my education, Stephen,” said Betty, as soon as she could speak. “I’m glad, because I think that, for an old person, you have a good deal of sense. I suppose my education has to be seen to, some time or other, and I’d rather you’d do it than anybody else I know.”

“Thank you, Betty,” I said gravely. “I hope I shall deserve your good opinion of my sense. I shall expect you to do as I tell you, and be guided by my advice in everything.”

“Yes, I will,” said Betty, “because I’m sure you won’t tell me to do anything I’d really hate to do. You won’t shut me up in a room and make me sew, will you? Because I won’t do it.”

I assured her I would not.

“Nor send me to a boarding-school,” pursued Betty. “Mother’s always threatening to send me to one. I suppose she would have done it before this, only she knew I’d run away. You won’t send me to a boarding-school, will you, Stephen? Because I won’t go.”

“No,” I said obligingly. “I won’t. I should never dream of cooping a wild little thing, like you, up in a boarding-school. You’d fret your heart out like a caged skylark.”

“I know you and I are going to get along together splendidly, Stephen,” said Betty, rubbing her brown cheek chummily against my shoulder. “You are so good at understanding. Very few people are. Even dad darling didn’t understand. He let me do just as I wanted to, just because I wanted to, not because he really understood that I couldn’t be tame and play with dolls. I hate dolls! Real live babies are jolly; but dogs and horses are ever so much nicer than dolls.”

“But you must have lessons, Betty. I shall select your teachers and superintend your studies, and I shall expect you to do me credit along that line, as well as along all others.”

“I’ll try, honest and true, Stephen,” declared Betty. And she kept her word.

At first I looked upon Betty’s education as a duty; in a very short time it had become a pleasure…the deepest and most abiding interest of my life. As I had premised, Betty was good material, and responded to my training with gratifying plasticity. Day by day, week by week, month by month, her character and temperament unfolded naturally under my watchful eye. It was like beholding the gradual development of some rare flower in one’s garden. A little checking and pruning here, a careful training of shoot and tendril there, and, lo, the reward of grace and symmetry!

Betty grew up as I would have wished Jack Churchill’s girl to grow–spirited and proud, with the fine spirit and gracious pride of pure womanhood, loyal and loving, with the loyalty and love of a frank and unspoiled nature; true to her heart’s core, hating falsehood and sham–as crystal-clear a mirror of maidenhood as ever man looked into and saw himself reflected back in such a halo as made him ashamed of not being more worthy of it. Betty was kind enough to say that I had taught her everything she knew. But what had she not taught me? If there were a debt between us, it was on my side.