Tiddy can best be described by the word “ÉveillÉe,” which cannot be translated exactly into English. “Alert” comes near it. “Wideawake” is not wide of the mark. Sir Nathaniel Tiddle’s daughter possessed shrewd brains, but little beauty. Being well aware of this, she made the most of what was likely to challenge interest and admiration. She cocked a pert little head at an unusual angle and flaunted short, crisp curls, which she shook in the face of Authority. The curls remained curly even after immersion in sea-water. Shampooed they became irrepressibly alive. Tiddy reckoned her curls to be a great asset. She awarded second place to her eyes, large, round, saucer-eyes, neither grey nor green nor blue, something of all three, fringed by short, thick, dark lashes, very provocative, and even more interrogative. They seemed to say: “I want to know everything about everybody.” Of her complexion (which was sallow), of her nose (which was pug), of her large mouth, let us say no more. Her teeth were small, white and even. Her figure lent itself to all vagaries of fashion, being slender but not thin. She could pass as a jolly boy without fear of her sex being detected. And she had in full measure a boy’s agility and lissomness.

Mentally, too, she had a healthy boy’s outlook, although emotionally feminine. Joy in life radiated from her. Dames of Lady Selina’s quality might (and did) stigmatise this as pagan. Long ago, Miss Spong had rebuked her for dancing or prancing to church. But, despite rebuke, she had gone on dancing, conscious, possibly, of slim ankles and high insteps.

Tiddy being an only child, it might be reasonably inferred that she was spoilt by adoring parents. Nothing of the kind. Sir Nathaniel had become a millionaire by the exercise of brains and indomitable will. Tiddy’s mother, as we have said, began womanhood in a shoe factory. Both Sir Nathaniel and she were excellent types of the successful industrial class in this nation. The beacon which had led them upwards and onwards was undiluted common sense. Sir Nathaniel had his weaknesses—what great man is without them?—pride in what he had accomplished, pardonable vanity, an ambition that vaulted as high as the Upper House, and an ever-increasing desire to play the part of a magnate. But he remained, like his wife, sound and simple at core. He had never, for example, turned his back upon relations who had not soared. He was of the people, and much too fond of saying so. Tiddy had inherited from him democratic instincts. And if, with accumulating riches, Sir Nathaniel had become, as his daughter hinted, conservative in regard to property, he never faltered in his allegiance to the class from which he had sprung. His great factories were models of organisation and administration. He boasted that no strikes had taken place in them. Possibly his greatest pleasure in life was taking appreciative guests—particularly personages—round his factories, and, in their presence receiving the homage of pleasant smiles and grateful words from his employÉs. It was after such an agreeable excursion that the honour of knighthood had been bestowed.