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Rachel and Isolde had known each other almost all their lives. As little children they strung daisy chains and made cowslip balls together, as school-girls they helped each other with their compositions on Simon de Montfort and the pleasures of a country walk, and when they had grown to womanhood, Rachel’s marriage in no way lessened their friendship. It was while she lay dying that she confided her baby to the love of her friend. “Be good to her, beloved, as you have been to me, and I should like her to be called Isolde Philomène—Isolde.”

A portrait of Rachel in her wedding-dress hung in Isolde’s boudoir, and Philomène had grown to love the sweet face and the white folds of the train. On entering the room her first glance was always for godmother, and the second for her mother’s portrait.

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Now when Philomène was still quite a little girl she had had some playfellows whom neither Nurse nor Miss Mills knew anything about, and these were her green dwarfs and Mrs Handy.