Her voice came very low and in broken
gasps; she was summoning all her strength that she might speak:

'My dear, dear husband, I am so sad at leaving you! You have made me so
happy, and I love you so! Forgive me, dear, for the pain I know you will
suffer when I am gone! And oh, Stephen, I know you will cherish our
little one--yours and mine--when I am gone. She will have no mother; you
will have to be father and mother too.' 'I will hold her in my very heart's core, my darling, as I hold you!' He
could hardly speak from emotion. She went on:

'And oh, my dear, you will not grieve that she is not a son to carry on
your name?' And then a sudden light came into her eyes; and there was
exultation in her weak voice as she said:

'She is to be our only one; let her be indeed our son! Call her the name
we both love!' For answer he rose and laid his hand very, very tenderly
on the babe as he said:

'This dear one, my sweet wife, who will carry your soul in her breast,
will be my son; the only son I shall ever have. All my life long I
shall, please Almighty God, so love her--our little Stephen--as you and I
love each other!' She laid her hand on his so that it touched at once her husband and her
child. Then she raised the other weak arm, and placed it round his neck,
and their lips met. Her soul went out in this last kiss. CHAPTER II--THE HEART OF A CHILD


For some weeks after his wife's death Squire Norman was overwhelmed with
grief. He made a brave effort, however, to go through the routine of his
life; and succeeded so far that he preserved an external appearance of
bearing his loss with resignation. But within, all was desolation. Little Stephen had winning ways which sent deep roots into her father's
heart. The little bundle of nerves which the father took into his arms
must have realised with all its senses that, in all that it saw and heard
and touched, there was nothing but love and help and protection. Gradually the trust was followed by expectation. If by some chance the
father was late in coming to the nursery the child would grow impatient
and cast persistent, longing glances at the door. When he came all was
joy. Time went quickly by, and Norman was only recalled to its passing by the
growth of his child. Seedtime and harvest, the many comings of nature's
growth were such commonplaces to him, and had been for so many years,
that they made on him no impressions of comparison. But his baby was one
and one only. Any change in it was not only in itself a new experience,
but brought into juxtaposition what is with what was. The changes that
began to mark the divergence of sex were positive shocks to him, for they
were unexpected. In the very dawn of babyhood dress had no special
import; to his masculine eyes sex was lost in youth. But, little by
little, came the tiny changes which convention has established. And with
each change came to Squire Norman the growing realisation that his child
was a woman. A tiny woman, it is true, and requiring more care and
protection and devotion than a bigger one; but still a woman. The pretty
little ways, the eager caresses, the graspings and holdings of the
childish hands, the little roguish smiles and pantings and flirtings were
all but repetitions in little of the dalliance of long ago. The father,
after all, reads in the same book in which the lover found his knowledge. At first there was through all his love for his child a certain
resentment of her sex. His old hope of a son had been rooted too deeply
to give way easily. But when the conviction came, and with it the habit
of its acknowledgment, there came also a certain resignation, which is
the halting-place for satisfaction. But he never, not then nor
afterwards, quite lost the old belief that Stephen was indeed a son. Could there ever have been a doubt, the remembrance of his wife's eyes
and of her faint voice, of her hope and her faith, as she placed her baby
in his arms would have refused it a resting-place. This belief tinged
all his after-life and moulded his policy with regard to his girl's
upbringing. If she was to be indeed his son as well as his daughter, she
must from the first be accustomed to boyish as well as to girlish ways. This, in that she was an only child, was not a difficult matter to
accomplish. Had she had brothers and sisters, matters of her sex would
soon have found their own level. There was one person who objected strongly to any deviation from the
conventional rule of a girl's education. This was Miss Laetitia Rowly,
who took after a time, in so far as such a place could be taken, that of
the child's mother. Laetitia Rowly was a young aunt of Squire Rowly of
Norwood; the younger sister of his father and some sixteen years his own
senior. When the old Squire's second wife had died, Laetitia, then a
conceded spinster of thirty-six, had taken possession of the young
Margaret. When Margaret had married Squire Norman, Miss Rowly was well
satisfied; for she had known Stephen Norman all her life. Though she
could have wished a younger bridegroom for her darling, she knew it would
be hard to get a better man or one of more suitable station in life. Also
she knew that Margaret loved him, and the woman who had never found the
happiness of mutual love in her own life found a pleasure in the romance
of true love, even when the wooer was middle-aged. She had been
travelling in the Far East when the belated news of Margaret's death came
to her. When she had arrived home she announced her intention of taking
care of Margaret's child, just as she had taken care of Margaret. For
several reasons this could not be done in the same way. She was not old
enough to go and live at Normanstand without exciting comment; and the
Squire absolutely refused to allow that his daughter should live anywhere
except in his own house. Educational supervision, exercised at such
distance and so intermittently, could neither be complete nor exact. Though Stephen was a sweet child she was a wilful one, and very early in
life manifested a dominant nature. This was a secret pleasure to her
father, who, never losing sight of his old idea that she was both son and
daughter, took pleasure as well as pride out of each manifestation of her
imperial will. The keen instinct of childhood, which reasons in feminine
fashion, and is therefore doubly effective in a woman-child, early
grasped the possibilities of her own will. She learned the measure of
her nurse's foot and then of her father's; and so, knowing where lay the
bounds of possibility of the achievement of her wishes, she at once
avoided trouble and learned how to make the most of the space within the
limit of her tether. It is not those who 'cry for the Moon' who go furthest or get most in
this limited world of ours. Stephen's pretty ways and unfailing good
temper were a perpetual joy to her father; and when he found that as a
rule her desires were reasonable, his wish to yield to them became a
habit.