spiced with a sense of humour and deepened by a sympathetic
understanding of frail human nature. And it was to him that Ralph
Quentin, when on his death-bed, had confided the care of his motherless
little daughter, Diana, appointing him her sole guardian and trustee.

The two men had been friends from boyhood, and perhaps no one had
better understood than Ralph, who had earlier suffered a similar loss,
the terrible blank which the death of his wife had occasioned in
Stair's life. The fellowship of suffering had drawn the two men
together in a way that nothing else could have done, so that when
Quentin made known his final wishes concerning his daughter, Alan Stair
had gladly accepted the charge laid upon him, and Diana, then a child
of ten, had made her permanent home at Crailing Rectory, speedily
coming to look upon her guardian as a beloved elder brother, and upon
his daughter, who was but two years her senior, as her greatest friend.

From the point of view of the Stairs themselves, the arrangement was
not without its material advantages. Diana had inherited three hundred
a year of her own, and the sum she contributed to "cover the cost of
her upkeep," as she laughingly termed it when she was old enough to
understand financial matters, was a very welcome addition to the
slender resources provided by the value of the living.

But even had the circumstances been quite other than they were, so that
the fulfilment of Ralph Quentin's last behest, instead of being an
assistance to the household exchequer, had proved to be a drain upon
it, Alan Stair would have acted in precisely the same way--for the
simple reason that there was never any limit to his large conception of
the meaning of the word friendship and of its liabilities.