But at the mature age of ten years, Christian cared for none of these
things. She saw the smoke from the Mount Music kitchen chimney
blending bluely with the mist, and thought with a momentary pang of
the birthday cake. She wondered if the Companions of Finn would so far
forget honour and fidelity as to devour it without her. She thought of
the ten candles that would gutter to their end, untended by the
heroine of the celebration; she wondered if Cottingham would tell
Papa, and if Papa would tell Mother (thus did this child of the
'eighties speak of her parents, the musical abbreviations of a later
day, "Mum," and "Dad," not having penetrated the remoteness in which
her home was placed); she also wondered if there would be a row about
her getting wet. All these things seemed but too probable, but she was
in for it now.

Near a ridge of the hill, in one of the shallow valleys that furrowed,
like ploughshares, its long slant, there was a dolmen, three huge
stones, with a fourth poised on it. Their grey brows rose over the
billows of bracken, and briers, laden with the promise of fruit, made
garlands for their ancient heads. Christian's straying advance brought
her along the lip of the little valley in which they reposed, and
quite suddenly there rose in her the conviction that her quest was
nearing success. She was of that mysteriously-gifted company to whom
the lairs of things lost are revealed. She "found things"; she was
"lucky." She was regarded by the servants as one enfolded in the cloak
of St. Anthony, that inestimable saint, whose mission it is to find
and protect the lost. It had become a household habit to appeal to
Christian when one of every day's most common losses occurred. She
would hearken; her little thin body would stiffen, like a dog setting
his game, a spark would light in her brown eyes, and--how led who can
say?--she would fly like a wireless message to the thing sought for.