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The Young O'Briens: Being an Account of Their Sojourn in London

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Title: The Young O'Briens: Being an Account of Their Sojourn in London

Creator: Margaret Westrup


        
Release date: April 5, 2014 [eBook #45324]

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG O'BRIENS: BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR SOJOURN IN LONDON ***




Produced by Al Haines.




                               THE YOUNG
                                O'BRIENS

                          BEING AN ACCOUNT OF
                        THEIR SOJOURN IN LONDON


                            By the author of
                         "ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN"

                 [Transcriber's note: Margaret Westrup]



                   LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
                 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MDCCCCVI




                           _Copyright_, 1906
                          BY JOHN LANE COMPANY

               _The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A._




                          _By the same Author_

                          ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN
                             Fifth Edition

                             HELEN ALLISTON




                          *THE YOUNG O'BRIENS*



                              *CHAPTER I*


Inside the hired omnibus there was a dead silence. Outside the rain
lashed drearily against the window panes. From the corner where Molly
sat there came a dismal, despairing sniffle, drowned, before its finish,
by Denis's superlatively cheerful voice.

"Sure, 'tis a rough night entirely!" he observed airily.

Nell gave a sudden quick little laugh with a queer end to it.

"So it is!" she said, and her effort after cheerfulness gave the remark
a surprised tone, as if she had not noticed before that the night was
rough.

Sheila Pat sat silent in her corner, her slim little body stiff and
erect, a bag and a box clutched tight in her small arms.  Afterwards,
later that night, she found that her arms ached.  There was desperation
in that tight clutch of the bag and the box.

Suddenly Mr. O'Brien spoke; he recognised the futility of ignoring what
was in everyone's mind.

"Well," he said, "a year soon passes, after all, and I hope we shall be
back in about ten or eleven months."

"But--but not--" came a watery stammer from Molly's corner, but Nell
broke in hurriedly.

"I--I wonder will you look different, dad?"

"Oh, yes," her mother laughed the pretty laugh that was just like
Nell's, "I shall be a horrid, stout old woman! Even Sheila Pat won't
acknowledge me then!"

Sheila Pat said nothing.

Mrs. O'Brien squeezed Nell's fingers tightly.  There was another
silence.  There was nothing to say.  Everything had been said over and
over again.  The wind sent the rain beating angrily against the closed
windows.  The omnibus jolted and jarred over the road.

A hoarse shout smote on their ears, and the driver's whip flicked one of
the panes.

Denis jumped up and let down the small window in front.  Then shouting
began; the wind howled derisively, drowning their voices.  The driver's
hoarse yells, and Denis's impatient shouts, asked and answered questions
over and over again.  At last Denis drew in his head:

"If that's a specimen of the London driver, I don't think much of 'em!
The wind didn't get at you, did it, mother?"

"No, dear, your broad shoulders kept it off."

"Does he seem to understand the way now?" Mr. O'Brien queried.

"I wouldn't like to answer for him.  I've explained till I'm hoarse, but
the damp seems to have got to his brain--it won't work--rusty, you
know."

"Isn't his voice funny?" observed Nell, doing her duty manfully.

"Drivers often have those hoarse voices," responded her father, and for
just as long as they could make it last, they used that driver as a
topic of conversation.  Certainly he did not seem of much use for any
other purpose.

It was not long before there came another flick against the window, and
on Denis putting forth his head, there ensued more shouts and yells.  In
a lull of the wind the driver waxed sentimentally despairing.  "Never
been to these 'ere East Lunnon docks afore--eh, sir?  Wot?  Which
turning? Can't see no turning.  It ain't a night as I'd turn a pore
blessed cat out--much less a respectable fambly man with little children
dependant on 'im!  Eh, sir? Can't 'ear, sir!  Wot?  Poplar?  Ain't
nowhere's near Poplar!"

Denis drew in his head.

"Of all the old fools!  I'd better go up on to the box and direct him.
I know my way better than he does, anyway, though I've only been to the
docks once."

"It's raining so, Denis," his mother put in.

"But we don't want the death from exposure of the respectable fambly man
on our consciences, do we, mother? Not to mention the touching little
children--"

It ended in his exit to the box.  Nell watched him go with wide,
strained eyes; she crushed down a strong impulse to clutch at his coat.
Without her twin she felt feeble and deserted.

When the omnibus stopped at last outside the dock gates, no one made a
movement towards getting out.  Long and dreary as that drive had been,
each one, looking out at those gates looming so big and grim in the dim
light cast by a solitary lamp, wished it could begin all over again. The
parting grew, at that jolting stop, suddenly, acutely nearer.  In spite
of the dread of it, perhaps no one had quite realised it.  To get out of
the omnibus was to give it a hideous reality.  A cautious voice demanded
their business.  Denis appeared at the door.  One by one they left the
omnibus.  The policeman, to whom the cautious voice belonged, let them
through a wicket; then began a dreary march in the dark; the wind sent
the rain beating against them in angry little gusts.  Laden with bundles
and packages, they stumbled along in the dense darkness, treading into
puddles, splashing, slipping.  There were no friendly lamps to cast a
warning glimmer on the deep puddles left by the rain in the holes of the
uneven ground.  They could barely distinguish the form of the diminutive
guide with whom the policeman had provided them.  But they could hear
him.  He was a small, sharp-looking boy, who heeded neither rain nor
wind nor dark, but trudged along, in and out the puddles, up and down
the hillocks, emitting a kind of dismal whistling below his breath.

Nell laughed suddenly with an overdone hilarity.

"The water's trickling down my neck!"

Denis seconded her with, "It's running a regular cascade off my hat
rim!"

Then the Atom spoke; it was the first remark she had made since they had
started from Miss Kezia's house in Henley Road.

"Isn't is _London_?" she said.

Her father was amused.

"You know, we do see rain occasionally at home," he observed.

"There's rain and _rain_!" the Atom declared sapiently, and relapsed
again into her dour silence.

Molly, with a sudden sob, put the fear that was in everyone's mind into
words.

"It's--awfully bad--for mother!"

"Oh, I shall be all right, dear," Mrs. O'Brien insisted with tired
cheerfulness.

"I've a good mind to drop my bag and carry you!" her husband declared.

"Oh, Owen, what a first appearance for the wife of the ship's surgeon!
Let me at least be dignified."

Beyond the small figure of their guide the _Albany_ loomed, slowly
taking shape in the dark, big, very mysterious.

"I bet we came to the wrong entrance," Denis observed.

Mr. O'Brien handed the guide a tip.  "I'm afraid we did," he said.

The guide disappeared with a "thankysir"; a steward's head bobbed up
from the hatchway and shouted out directions.  Mr. O'Brien and Denis
helped the others along a wet, slippery board, and over the ship's side.

The saloon looked more cheerful; deserted as it was, it wore quite a
festive air after the wet and darkness outside.

In the cabin they hung up a few things, to give it a more homelike air,
and because it was easier to do something than not.  They procured
coffee from the steward, but no one wanted it.  Everyone pretended they
did, except Sheila Pat, who never pretended.  Mrs. O'Brien made her
drink it.

"You are cold and wet, dear; it--I--will--"

She stopped abruptly.  Nell saw and understood.  She went close.

"I--I will take care of her--" she whispered.

She had promised it so often, but Mrs. O'Brien turned to her gratefully.

"Yes, dear," she said; her eyes went from Nell back again hungrily to
the bit of brow and head that Sheila Pat's big coffee cup left exposed.

"I know you will, Nell," she said gently, and kissed her.

Several other passengers had arrived and sat or stood about the saloon
and cabins with an air of unsettledness, of uncertainty.  The last
minute came suddenly at the end. There was a sort of breathless rush;
injunctions, good-byes, forcedly hopeful prognostications.

"A year soon passes!" Mr. O'Brien said again.

A little later they were in the omnibus once more.  There were gaps now;
there was so much room to move about. Those gaps gave a poignant reality
to the loneliness.

In Nell's mind there grew up a dull wonder whether anyone could
conceivably think that a year soon passes.  To her the coming year
stretched long and interminable; at the moment she was incapable of
looking beyond it.  Father and mother were gone, and home was gone too.
The wonder passed, and with aching iteration there dinned in her
ears--"So long as the shamrock's growing in Ireland, will there be
O'Briens in Kilbrannan."  It was a prediction of an old gipsy's.  She
had given it when telling Denis his fortune.  That was last year, barely
a year ago, and now--Nell's lips curled with a sudden bitterness that
made her young, soft face look, for the moment, older--now there were
strangers in their home, and no O'Briens in Kilbrannan.  She wondered
tragically how it was possible to live through months such as they had
lived through. Looking back, the failure of the bank in which most of
her father's money had been placed, and which had been the first
misfortune to fall upon them, seemed a small calamity.  She remembered
the shock of it, the sorrow, with surprise now. What though they had
been obliged to retrench, to pinch and try to learn the lesson of
economy, they had still their home and were not separated.  The grief of
parting with old servants, with some of the horses, had been sharp.  But
they had still dear old Patsy; they had O'Leary and Gretta; and they
had--Nell's breath caught suddenly--they had Acushla, the Colleen Bawn.
Her thoughts chased each other over those unhappy months.  The day when
her mother had so suddenly been taken ill stood out, sharp and grim. She
remembered the anxious worry she had experienced when she saw that in
spite of the doctor's hopeful words, in spite of the daily improvement
in the invalid, her father's face refused to lighten.  She remembered
the slow growth of suspicion in her mind, so that when at last he asked
her and Denis to come into the study one day, she knew they were to hear
some bad news.  Denis knew it too, but in their worst prognostications
they had never given one thought to the possibility of having to give up
their home for awhile. Even when their father had told them, they could
not comprehend quite.  Nell remembered how she had stood staring
stupidly at the binding of one of Ruskin's works in the book-case, where
a ray of sunlight shone on it.  She had found herself saying, "Sesame
and Lilies."  Then her eyes had followed the ray of sunshine to the
windows--beyond the windows.  She gave a little shudder at the memory of
that moment of sudden, sharp realisation.  The study faced east; its
windows looked out on to great boulders of grey rock that led in a long
uneven slope to the seaweed-covered rocks and the sea.  The heather had
been out then; the boulders were covered with it; there was a little
mist in the air, so that the grey and purple mingled in a lovely haze of
colour.  The sea-gulls and the gannets were quarrelling over something;
their voices came in at the open windows.  The scent of the seaweed had
come to her, too; and quite suddenly she had understood that they were
to leave it all.  Her father had gone on speaking; she had felt vaguely
sorry for him, as she listened to his halting speech and saw the
strained look on his face.  But in those first minutes nothing was of
moment, nothing was real, save the crushing blow that they were to leave
their home; that they were to go away; that strangers were to live in
it.  But presently she realised that he was trying to prepare them for
some further bad news.  She had smiled at his thinking it necessary to
prepare them; nothing mattered now.  Denis had had the same feeling.  He
had broken into his father's speech abruptly, roughly:--

"Tell us what it is.  What does it matter, anyway?"

But Mr. O'Brien had gone on skirting the subject, preparing them.

"I have been anxious for months about those mine shares. They have gone
down and down, and now they have ceased to pay any dividends at all."

He had said it before, had explained that it was because of these shares
that they must let their home.

Denis said, surprised, "The Reve d'or shares?"

"Why, yes!  Oh, you mean I've told you that already? But I thought they
were such a good investment--" he broke off, and walked quickly to the
window.

"Your mother isn't getting her strength back," he said suddenly.

They realised at once that there were still things that mattered.  He
went on quickly: "You needn't be anxious.  Oh, no!  But Dr. O'Donovan--"
he broke off, and started afresh.  "You know that, as a young man, I
didn't expect to come into this--" he waved his hand impatiently around.
There was an air about him now of wanting to get it over as quickly as
possible; an irritated impatience made his words hurried.

"Well, you know, I studied medicine.  I was a qualified doctor.  It's
all settled.  I've got the post.  There's no other way.  Dr. O'Donovan
says your mother must have a sea voyage.  We can't afford it.  I've got
the post of surgeon on the _Albany_--starts at end of October for
Australia--sailing ship."

They knew it all at last.  Thinking it over now, Nell was struck with
the difference there had been from his usual manner of speaking.  She
knew now what it had cost him to tell them.  Then she had been too
absorbed in her horror to think much of anything beyond the news he had
told them.

After that, in the weeks that followed, there had been the cruel
carrying into effect of the news.  There had been much wearisome talk.
Amongst it Nell remembered one thing that had been clear and definite at
once.  That was Denis's determination to do some sort of work.  Mr.
O'Brien wished him to study shorthand and type-writing, with a literary
future in view.  But Denis refused, beyond agreeing to study them in his
spare time.  For the rest he intended to do work that would have
remuneration attached to it.  Already he was fired with hope and
ambition to turn the strangers from their home.  Mr. O'Brien secured him
a position as a clerk in a London bank, the manager of which had been a
schoolfellow of his.  Nell cried miserably because she wasn't a boy.
Denis shook her, and painted, in glowing colours, the great academy
picture that in a few years' time was to win her fame and fortune. But
two or three years seemed such an interminable time that, mostly, her
mind refused to grasp the thought.

There had been much discussion as to where they should stay while their
parents were away.  They were singularly destitute of relations.  They
had some cousins in America, and an aunt by marriage in London.  They
had never seen the aunt; but she happened to live near the bank where
Denis had found employment.  She had lately lost her mother, and with
her the annuity that had helped to pay the rent of the house.  She wrote
suggesting that they should come to her.  After much worried discussion
it was settled that they should live with her for the time. Mr. O'Brien
paid a small sum for their maintenance in advance, and they faced the
thought of a house in a street in London.

Sheila Pat, before she left Kilbrannan, laid out a burying-ground.  She
dug with a dogged face, and a mind black with pictures of a London where
it was always foggy--where there were nothing but muddy pavements; roads
crowded with poor tired horses carrying loads too heavy for them; and
tall houses packed so close together that you were stifled.  She refused
to lighten the picture by the admittance into it of so much as one blade
of grass.  She chose a spot for her burying-ground close by the little
stream that gurgled so softly sometimes and roared and rushed at others.
The smooth piece of grass, just by the boulders that turned the stream
into a little cascade, was sheltered on the other side by a hill that
rose up--grey rock, purple heather, bracken, and grass--till it seemed
to meet the sky. There Sheila Pat buried her treasures.  She had always
scorned dolls; only once had she been presented with a doll, and within
the day it had been mercilessly drowned.  But she had many treasures,
and she buried them, in an agony of renunciation.  "Here you will have
the heather and the stream, and when the wind blows from the west you'll
get the scent of the turf smoke from Biddy's cottage."  She laid a large
and grinning monkey tenderly down beside a one-legged driver.  "Oh, my
dears, and when the wind's in the east, you'll get the sea,"--she hid
her face in a passion of woe--"and you'll be hearing the trees
whisp'rin' and singin' and your Sheila Pat far away in a great, dirty
London, dead with stiflin', and only streets to walk in!"

She hugged up to her bosom a jaunty jockey, who had lost an eye and a
nose.

"I'll put you on Mavourneen--your own Mavourneen--who won the Dalgerry
race for you."  She seized up Mavourneen and hugged her too.  "You won't
mind waitin' for me, under the earth; for isn't it Irish earth,
Mavourneen? And weren't you born and bred on it?  But I was, too! Oh, I
was, too!"

The old grey rock and the heather looked down upon a prone Atom--prone
and shaking in a storm of bitter weeping--midst dogs and horses,
jockeys, monkeys, and jaunting-car drivers.

No one intruded on her there.  Sheila Pat had not been known to cry
since her babyhood.  She scorned tears; no physical hurt could break
down her sturdy self-control. In those last days she was often a
ludicrous Atom.  Grave, self-contained, her pig-tail immaculate, she
would emerge from the burying-ground, facing the world with a brave
little countenance and all unaware that it was adorned with patches and
streaks of dirt.

The pig-tail was generally crooked, but that was merely because Sheila
Pat invariably plaited it herself.  No one would do it for her; they did
not approve of her mode of dressing her hair, but the Atom clung
obstinately to her pig-tail, and serenely wore it over her left
shoulder.

Nell, in the omnibus, glanced across at the small, still figure opposite
her; a great ache seized her throat.

Suddenly Denis made a valiant effort.  He broke the silence with a
jocose--

"This rivals Dinny O'Sullivan's donkey barrow!  My teeth are fairly
rattling in my boots!"

Nell said "yes" with weary dutifulness.

The silence fell again.  He rubbed his brow, and recognised the
uselessness of worrying them with such palpably unreal cheerfulness.
All his castles in Spain were, for the time being, razed to the ground.
With the O'Briens there was no possibility of a story or two tumbling;
the whole edifice had to tower to the skies or fall flat to the ground.
The omnibus drew up outside No. 35, Henley Road.  They got out, and
stood a moment--a forlorn little group--looking at the tall, narrow
house, with, to their eyes, such an unhappy air of being wedged in too
tightly between the two neighbouring houses.

"Run in and knock, while I pay up," Denis admonished them.

They trailed slowly up the flight of steps.  Nell knocked. There was a
pause; then they heard a step approaching the door.  With a sudden
spasmodic burst of awakened conscience and courage Nell drew herself
erect and tried to achieve a smile.

The rattle of bars and chains that heralded the opening of the door was
hideous to their unaccustomed ears; it shocked them with its clang of
inhospitality--its suggestion of suspicion.

Miss Kezia opened the door a cautious inch or two and peered out.  Her
face appeared to them, against the light, very long and very black.

"It's you," she said; "come in."

Nell faltered, calling together all her stock of politeness, "I'm sorry
that you had to sit up for us."

Miss Kezia waved it aside with a curt response that a little loss of
sleep would not hurt her.

There was porridge waiting for them in the dining room. Too wretched,
too apathetic to make the necessary stand against it, they sat down to
the table and tried to eat.

The dining room was furnished strictly for use and not for ornament.
Heavy chairs and a heavier sideboard constituted all the furniture, save
the table.  The floor was covered with a cold linoleum.  There was no
flower in the room.  Only one gas-burner was alight, and it left gloomy
corners.  There was a stiff look about it all, a poverty and bareness
that was bewilderingly new to them.  A beautiful little cocker spaniel,
who pressed close to them with plaintive whimpers when they entered the
room, looked quite out of place there.  Miss Kezia eyed her with
disfavour. She demanded, "Where will that dog sleep?"

The want of due respect in the designation roused Sheila Pat.

She said coldly, "Her name is Kate Kearney."

"What a ridiculous name!" Miss Kezia ejaculated.

The Atom was indignant.

"Is it rickelous?  And how about Kezia, then?"

There was a pause.

Denis interposed amusedly: "Perhaps you don't know the song, Aunt Kezia?
It's like this--"  Gaily his voice sang out:--

    "'Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?
    She lives on the banks of Killarney--'

"Eh?  Noise?  _Noise_?" he murmured surprisedly. "Allow me just to
whisper the lines that fit K.K. so beautifully:--

    "'For that eye is so modestly beaming
    You ne'er think of mischief she's dreaming--'"

Grim and portentous came an interruption.

"Is it mischievous?"

"Er--" said Denis, and his eye twinkled, "she was when she was a puppy,
you see."

"Um," observed Miss Kezia.  "If it works any mischief here, it will have
to be chained up in the garden."

"Sure, then," burst wildly from the Atom, "'tis myself'll be chained
beside her!"

"Sheila, do not be absurd!"

"And she isn't 'it'!  If you call her 'it' again, I'll be callin' you a
Scotch bannock!"

Nell roused to a perfunctory--

"Oh, Sheila Pat!"

Miss Kezia said coldly, "You are a very rude little girl."  She turned
to Denis.  "Will you tell me where that dog is to sleep?"

"On the mat outside Nell's door."

"I will not have a dog rampaging over my house to work what mischief it
likes while we sleep."

"She shall sleep on my bed," put in a very disdainful Atom.

"Certainly she shall not!  Disgusting!  Unhealthy! Spoiling my
counterpanes!"

Nell looked at Miss Kezia, a weary wonder in her face. "She can sleep on
the floor beside my bed," she said.

Miss Kezia hesitated; her eyes met those of the Atom--wide, defiant,
indomitable in her small, obstinate face. In her ears echoed some words
of Mrs. O'Brien's that Miss Kezia had privately labelled foolish.
"Sheila Pat is delicate.  Perhaps we have spoilt her a little.  She is
very strong-willed.  She cannot be driven, but she can be led.  Her
feelings use her up--exhaust her."  There had been a little sudden
hopeless pause there; then--"I hope you will understand her."

Miss Kezia had not noticed the pause or the pleading note--a note
vibrating with the struggle against the speaker's own conviction.  She
would not have understood, had she noticed, any more than she would ever
understand the Atom of humanity who was defying her now.

"Very well," she said, with a glance of dislike at poor K.K.

Denis broke in with a solicitous air, and a tone reminiscent of the
Blarney Stone:--

"I do wish you would go to bed, Aunt Kezia!  You do look so tired."

Nell smiled suddenly.

"Yes, do, Aunt Kezia," she urged demurely.

Miss Kezia, after somewhat lengthy directions as to turning off the gas,
shutting, locking, and hanging a huge burglar bell on the dining-room
door, turned to leave the room.

Sheila Pat, stiff, erect, followed her with warlike gaze.

Miss Kezia paused and said:--

"See that that baby goes to bed the minute she has finished her
porridge.  She ought not to have gone to the docks at all--"

Nell flashed out a shaky interruption--

"Others--thought she ought!"

The Atom observed calmly:--

"I am not a baby.  At home, gerrels of six will not be babies.  I'm not
wantin' the stirabout at all, thank you."

"Sheila, you are speaking with an atrocious accent!"

For the first time that night the Atom's sombre eyes lit with a gleam of
satisfaction.

"Accent, is it?  Sure and 'tisn't me own native accent I'd be ashamed of
then!" she retorted.

"It isn't the accent of ladies and gentlemen, Sheila! You are a rude and
foolish little girl!"

Calm and unabashed, the Atom responded with fervour.

"'Tis the way many of my best friends spake at home--always--wakin' and
sleepin' they spake like that, and I'll be spakin' like it, too."

With her black little head well up, and her absurd pig-tail at an acute
angle, she waited for Miss Kezia's response.

But Denis interposed from the doorway with a judicious appeal to her
sense of economy.

"I say, Aunt Kezia, I've lit your candle, and it's spluttering like a
dumb man asking for a tip!"

Miss Kezia turned and hurriedly left the room.

Molly suddenly pushed her bowl away with an angry clatter.  She flung
her arms out over the table and hid her face in them.

"Oh, I can't--help it!" she cried out wildly. "Everything's so--awful!"
and she burst into tears.

Nell caught her underlip between her teeth and rose.

"Shan't we go to bed, Denis?" she said wearily.

"Yes, come along.  K.K. may as well have the porridge. We've been
neglecting you, old lady, haven't we, then?"

The Atom sat rigid, her shocked gaze bent stiffly on Molly's prone head.

"Oh," sobbed Molly, "I shall die--in a week--here--I--hate Aunt Kezia--I
hate this house--I hate--everything! Oh, I want mother--and dad--"

The Atom got down stiffly from her chair, her gaze never leaving Molly.

Nell, in pity of the little white face, tried to put Kate Kearney into
her arms, but she drew back.  "I don't want her," she said.

They crept upstairs and bade each other good night.

"I--I'm sure I'll be dead when I wake up in the morning!" Molly quavered
wretchedly.  "I--can't breathe--in this place--there isn't room to
move--I shall suffocate."

Sheila Pat was to share Nell's room.  She followed her in in silence.
They undressed quickly.  The Atom said her prayers and got into bed.
Nell knelt down, but no prayers would come.  She knelt and cried into
the counterpane.

After a while an austere voice smote upon her ear.

"Nell O'Brien, I'm thinkin' you're keepin' God up very late!"

Nell said a prayer--a somewhat incoherent one--and scrambled into bed.

An hour later she sat up and turned her pillow.  She looked across at
the little white bed that glimmered over by the window; then she
burrowed her head despairingly down into the dry side of her pillow.
The sight of it, as she had lifted it to turn it over, had brought to
her mind the stout old rector at home.  She remembered how Sheila Pat
had once earnestly declared he was so nice to lean against--"just like a
pillow."  She quoted him beneath her breath, a humorous dimple denting
her wet cheek.

"'Let us now consider our blessings--never mind the bad things.  Let
them go.  Consider the good things.  The bad things will have more than
their share of our thoughts, you may be very sure!'"  So Nell got her
hands into position to tick off her blessings.  "First, there's Denis."
She paused; her slim body grew tense with sudden horror, as the thought
gripped her: "Suppose Denis had gone, too!"

With an impulsiveness that was characteristic she slipped from the bed
to the floor, seized up her dressing-gown, ran out on to the landing and
upstairs to his room.

"Come in!"

She opened the door and was nearly blown backward down the stairs by the
gale that met her.

Denis was sitting up in bed.

"You, old girl?  Anything up?"

She stood in the doorway, her dressing-gown streaming out around her,
her hair blowing across her face.  She laughed uncertainly.

"Come out of that!  Shut the door, you goose.  And why on earth don't
you furl your sails?  Anything wrong with the Atom?"

She shut the door with slow care.

"No," she said; "she's pretending to be asleep."

There was a little pause.  She buttoned up her dressing-gown slowly.

"You're not walking in your sleep, are you?" he suggested, with a little
laugh.  He swung himself off the bed and came towards her; he put his
hands on her shoulders.  "Now, twin, out with it!  What did you come
for, eh?"

She gave a little childish struggle under his warm hands; she looked up
into his face.

"I had to, Denis!  A dreadful conviction has come upon me that she'll
give us soft-boiled eggs for breakfast!"

He swung her softly to and fro.

"Well, you needn't have come to give me nightmare just because you're
going to have it!  Was it the action of a twin, I ask?"

She laughed softly, irresistibly.

"Oh, oh, Denis, your floor's swamped!  What will Aunt Kezia say?"

He turned his head lazily and surveyed the floor over by the window.

"It'll dry," he observed with equanimity.

She eyed the window, flung as wide as it would go.

"You _mustn't_ have it so wide, Denis!  You really mustn't!"

"D'you want to murder your twin?  Why, I'd be dying of suffocation!
There're _roofs_ all round, Nell!  Beastly houses stuck all on top of
us--almost in our back yard! I can't get a breath of air even now!"

The toilet cover was wildly fluttering its corners; a towel had been
blown from the towel horse and danced merrily in a corner; one curtain
was streaming, a wet limp rag, out into the night, the other was
whirling in graceful curves across the room; Denis's tie had twined
itself round the leg of a chair.

She gave a little laugh.

"If you won't shut the window, I will!  And," glancing down at her bare
toes, "I don't feel the least bit inclined to paddle just now."

"Then don't."

"But you _will_ shut it--"

"But I won't!"

She looked out into the darkness where the curtain waved forlornly.

"Seriously, Denis--"

"Seriously, Nell, it's in bed you ought to be, not to mention your poor
twin!"

"You see, I've got a conscience."

"More noodle you!  Go and sleep it off."

"Sure now, asthore, you'll not be refusin' your own twin?" she cooed.

"You're a beastly little humbug!"

He went across to the window and banged it down. The bang echoed
startlingly in the night.

"Oh, Denis, you've shut the curtain out!"

"Eh?  Oh, well, it can stay out."

A loud whisper hissed with disconcerting suddenness through the keyhole.

"Denis O'Brien, are you asleep?"

Nell turned to him with a little gasp.

"Denis, I--I can't stand any more of her to-night!"  Her small fingers
caught his arm with sudden desperation.

"Here, in you go!"  He picked her up and deposited her in the bed.
"Keep quiet," he said peremptorily.

He emitted a loud and very realistic yawn.

"Denis O'Brien!"

"Is it dreaming I am?" he observed in a sleepy voice.

"Apparently you are!" came the sharp retort through the keyhole.

"Is that you, Aunt Kezia?" he queried in a surprised voice.  "Isn't it
time you were in bed?"

"I wish to speak to you at once!"

"I'm here, close to the keyhole."

"Open the door!"

"Oh!  Er--you know--my costume--rather primitive, you know--"  His
absurd air of coyness brought an irrepressible giggle from the bed.

"Please don't try to be funny!  Unlock your door at once!"

"It's never locked at all."  He opened it so suddenly that Miss Kezia
nearly fell headlong into the room.  He caught her in his arms.  "Are
you hurt?  Sure?  Well, what is it now?  A mouse?  Let me go and kill
him!"

Miss Kezia had righted herself; she stood, candle in hand, glaring at
him angrily.  The light flickered over her gaunt face and weird
night-cap, over the severe and scanty folds of her sombre dressing-gown.

"I heard a window closed," she began.

"Window?  I say, Aunt Kezia, don't be nervous, but--er--don't London
burglars generally open windows? Let's find a poker.  I," quoth he,
bravely, "will protect you."

"It--wasn't you?" Miss Kezia hesitated.

Apparently he did not hear.  He was gently but firmly ejecting her from
his room.  Together they searched the house, but found no suggestion of
a burglar.  Miss Kezia went back reluctantly to her bed.

"Let us trust she'll be visited with a plague of nightmare burglars!"
Denis sent after her cheerfully.

Nell, creeping back to her room, heard through the half-open door a
murmur.  She looked in, and saw a small pig-tailed figure sitting up in
bed clasping something black to its bosom.

"Oh, my own K.K.--did I say I wasn't wantin' you, asthore?  'Twas only
because I was frightened I'd cry, like that silly Molly.  I didn't mean
it, K.K.  Oh, I didn't! 'Twas cruel of me to say it, dear--"  The murmur
was broken, full of tears.

Nell went back softly up a few stairs; then came down again, with a
little stumble and an "Oh!"

She could not help an apprehensive thought of Miss Kezia and burglars.
When she entered the bedroom Sheila Pat lay still, apparently fast
asleep.

Trotting across the floor, back to the petticoat she had purloined from
a chair, went a sedate little Kate Kearney.




                              *CHAPTER II*


"Four and threepence," said Denis, with his head up the chimney.

"Sure?" said Nell, doubtfully.  "I've added it up three times, and it
hasn't come to that once."

"Then there's no doubt about it; four and threepence 'tis, my dear!"

A pause.  A scream.

"Oh, Denis, rescue them!"

A horrible smell of burning ensued.  Denis eyed the smoking stockings
with equanimity.

"O dear," sighed Nell, "and there was only one tiny hole in them.  It's
all your fault, Denis.  You shouldn't be rude to me, when your head's
such a beautiful target."

But Denis had emerged from the chimney, and was quietly smoking his
cigarette in the open room.

"Jolly good idea, old girl.  Twig?  Every time I want to do a smoke,
we'll burn a pair of stockings--they'd out-smell Patsy O'Driscoll's
cigars!"

"Denis," Nell spoke with a puckered brow, "how much _is_ five cakes when
they're four for threepence halfpenny?"

"Nell, your grammar!  It makes me feel faint!"

"'Are,' then.  You're only trying to gain time.  Oh, Atom, don't move!
Kate Kearney's splendid like that.  I _must_ get her."

Denis looked over her shoulder as she dashed in a rapid pencil sketch.
He glanced across at Molly and winked. It was a family joke that
everything Nell began--accounts, sewing, tidying-up--ended, on the
slightest possible pretext, in a sketch.

"Oh, Denis," Molly besought nervously, "I _know_ Aunt Kezia will smell
your cigarette!"

He struck an attitude.

"I defy her!  Shall an O'Brien be cowed by a Scotch woman, and in his
stronghold, too?  Shall a young man who is also a bank clerk be
frightened of a mere ignoramusess--oh, Lor', Molly, hide me--hide
me--here she comes!"

Molly flung down the stocking she was darning.

"Oh, Denis!" she gasped, jumping up and knocking over her chair.  "Oh--"

But Denis had subsided on to the old lounge, with his head buried in the
cushion, and Molly realised she had been "had."  She made a wild rush at
him, K.K. joined in the fray, and Nell's model was gone.

"Pommel me as much as you like," cried he, weakly. "That's the third
time to-day you've swallowed Aunt Kezia!"

"I should think she would be rather indigestible," opined Nell, putting
in a few finishing touches.  "Denis, what do you think of the way these
chrysanthemums have faded? Only two days, and they cost half a crown!"

"I'll get you some more."

Nell looked thoughtful; she stubbed her paper viciously.

"I begin to fancy paupers oughtn't to indulge in flowers."

"Oh, Irish paupers ought," he declared airily.

The Atom arose, shook out her skirts, and proceeded to the door.

"Where are you going, Sheila Pat?"

"Downstairs," was the staid reply.

Once outside, she stopped to smooth her hair; then she stood
considering, with a thoughtful brow.  She went into her bedroom, dragged
a chair to the toilet table, scrambled on to it, and anxiously examined
the pair of slim legs displayed in the glass.  What she saw displeased
her; she stamped angrily, and toppled off the chair with a crash.

"What's up?" came a musical shout from the direction of the
"Stronghold."

"Nothin' at all!" responded the Atom, with unabated dignity, though she
was obliged for the moment to stand on one leg.  She waited a minute,
then lifting her loose frock, wiggled round and round in her efforts to
unfasten her petticoat.  She managed it at last, shook it down to her
ankles, and mounted the chair again to view the effect. Her anxious face
fell; she sighed heavily, and slowly climbed to the floor.  She fumbled
at the fastening of her petticoat, pulling it well up, then left the
room.  She went down the stairs till she reached the last flight that
faced the front door.  She sat down on the top stair and waited. The
dusk deepened; the clock ticked on and on down in the hall, but the
little pale face glimmered patiently at the top of the stairs.
Presently a key grated in the lock of the door; Sheila Pat rose.  The
door opened, and a big broad man in a huge ulster came heavily in.
Sheila Pat took a dignified step forward, missed, in the dusk, the
stair, and rolled down and down to the big man's feet.

"Ach!" exclaimed the big man, and then he made noises that interested
Sheila Pat, because they made her think of the hens in Biddy O'Regan's
cottage.  She rose; her cheeks were scarlet with shame.

"Are you hurrt?" exclaimed the big man.

"Not at all.  Please," said the Atom, with a dignity a good deal bigger
than herself, "please don't mention it. 'Tis a visit I've come to pay
you," she added.

"Ach!" said the big man again.

Over a large and very fierce mustache, all grey bristles, his eyes were
twinkling down at her.

"Pray come in," he said, and opened the door of the room opposite the
dining room.  The Atom's face kindled triumphantly as she looked round.
Miss Kezia's grim voice seemed to hover alluringly round the solid
mahogany chairs and table.

"You are not to enter this room.  Remember, I have forbidden you."

Sheila Pat climbed on to one of the big chairs and sat down with a
complacent smile.

Herr Schmidt eyed her anxiously.

"You are quite sure you are not hurt, meine liebe?  It was a bad fall, a
very bad fall."

Sheila Pat looked surprised.  As a matter of fact her left elbow was
smarting badly, and her left ankle bone, too, but in the O'Brien
phraseology, this did not signify a "hurt."  Moreover she objected to
his alluding again to her undignified entrance into the hall.  She gave
her skirts a pull, and turned the conversation.

"How-d'you-do?" she said.

He came forward and gravely shook hands.

"It is ze fine day, hein?" he observed, with a curious elephantine
anxiety to be properly polite to his very polite visitor.

The Atom's eyes turned to the window and studied the brilliant pink sky
beyond it.

"The fine day, is it?  It's not so bad for London," she observed in a
disparaging voice.

"You come from Ireland?"

"Yes."

He peered into the rigid little face and understood.

"I come from Shermany," he said gently.  "Little one, you will return
some day."

The Atom said nothing.

"You haf ze nice little dog."  Herr Schmidt changed the conversation
cheerfully.  "What do you call him?"

"She isn't a him at all," the Atom said scornfully; "'tis herself's a
lady!  An' her name's Kate Kearney."

"Ach!" said Herr Schmidt.

Sheila Pat looked at him gravely.

"I am very small for my age," she began in an anxious voice.  "I'm not
very young really.  I'm more than six. I'm quite nine weeks more."

"Quite very old," he agreed heartily.  "And now you will eat and drink
with me, hein?"  He was opening a cupboard.  "It is a very goot cake.  I
am what you call an old sweet-teeth.  And the drink will not harm you;
it is sweet and hot--it is made by my old mother."  He poured out two
glasses and handed her one.

"We will drink and be friends, eh?"

She hesitated.

"'Tis wondhring I am just what a lodger _is_," she explained.  "I've
never met one before, you see.  Nell turned up her nose at you and said
she'd never be dhramin' Aunt Kezia was so bad as to have a lodger."

"Your aunt is a very kind laty; she allows me to live here, while I am
far from Shermany," he said gravely.

The Atom looked interested; after a pause of wonder she dismissed the
question of her aunt's being a kind lady, and observed:--

"Is that all?  We'll drink then and be friends.  I hope you won't mind
if I don't love you _very_ much, because you're not Irish, you see."

He declared he would be satisfied with what degree of affection she
thought fit to bestow on him.  She lifted her glass.

"'Tis Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien I'm called, but _you_ must be
callin' me Miss O'Brien."

"Ach, so, of course.  And I," he bowed deeply, "am Herr Schmidt, Miss
O'Brien."

The Atom's heart rejoiced exceedingly.  She put down her glass and
slipped off her chair.  Gravely she bowed her head, and the pig-tail
stuck out with a rakish air of enjoyment.  Reseating herself, she
politely urged him to have some cake.

"Now we are friends, I will interdruce you to my Snowy-Breasted Pearl,
Mr. Hair Smitt.  He is very beautiful.  I couldn't bring him with me,
because, he preferred to stay in his cage."  She eyed a red tooth-mark
on her forefinger. "He is very high-spirited, you see.  He is gold and
brown and he has a white breast like pearls and snow, and he is white
behind, too--just up over his extremes and both hind legs.  Nell has
painted him lots of times.  You see, in the song, 'the snowy-breasted
Pearl' is a lady, but my _dear_ guinea-pig was so _'zact_, I crissened
him that."

"I wish you would be so goot as to sing the song to me, Miss O'Brien."

"Is it me sing?  Oh, yes.  But it's rather long.  Do you think you'd get
tired of it at all?"

He denied such a possibility with horror.

"My mouth is rather full of cake, Mr. Hair Smitt.  Do you mind waitin' a
little?"

The cake disposed of, she lifted up a sweet little voice, and sang:--

    "'There's a colleen fair as May,
    For a year and for a day
    I have sought by ev'ry way
      Her heart to gain.

    "'There's no art of tongue or eye
    Fond youths with maidens try,
    But I've tried with ceaseless sigh,
      Yet tried in vain.'"


(Pause.) "I'm afraid I forget some," the Atom confessed, ashamed.  "But
I know all the parts about my guinea-pig," she added anxiously.

"Will you sing those parts?" he asked courteously.

She began again:--

    "'Oh, thou bloomin' milk-white dove
    To whom I've given my love,
    Do not ever thus reprove
      My consancy.

    "'For if not mine, dear boy,
    Oh, snowy-breasted pearl,
    May I never from the fair
      With life return.'


"It _ought_ to be 'girl' to rhyme with 'pearl,' but, you see, he _isn't_
a girl, so I made up 'boy' myself.  Doesn't the song fit him
_beautifully_?"

The door had been left ajar; a small black nose inserted itself in the
crack with a pathetic snort.

"It is your little dog!" Herr Schmidt exclaimed.  "Come in!  Come in!"
He gave a great fat laugh.  "Come in!"

Sheila Pat slipped to the floor.

"She's shy," she explained, and went and opened the door wide.

Kate Kearney trotted in, sleek and black, giving little scriggles of
love as she came.  She rubbed herself against the Atom's legs, she
licked her hand, she lifted superlatively great innocent eyes.

"Kate Kearney, what is it you've been doin'?" the Atom said.

K.K. went into an ecstasy of adoration; she jumped and licked the Atom's
cheek, she wriggled, she ran to and fro, she gave short little whimpers,
and she turned a reproachful, widely innocent gaze upon the Atom's
suspicious countenance.

Sheila Pat laughed proudly.

"She always looks burstin' with goodness when she's been doin' somethin'
bad," she said.

"She is a beautiful little dog."

"She got first prize at the dog show, in the cocker spaniel puppy class,
an' a 'Highly Commended' in the open class."

"Ach!" said Herr Schmidt.

"Aunt Kezia doesn't like her.  Molly says she would if she was a cat,
because old maids always like cats, but Sarah says she won't let her
give scraps to the poor starvin' creatures at all.  Kate Kearney mostly
stays in the Stronghold with us.  Denis 'gested the name.  Isn't it a
good one? It's our very own room, you see, and Aunt Kezia's the enemy we
keep--"  There was a jerk, a pause.

Herr Schmidt, peering across at her, saw an agonised wave of red mount
to her very brow.

"I--I think I'd better be goin' now," but she did not move.

He took a step towards her.

"Oh, oh, _please_ would you mind stayin' there?" she cried out in a
shrill little agitated voice.

He stopped abruptly.

"What is it, meine liebe?"

"You have been very kind, indeed, Mr. Hair Smitt."  The Atom's
exceedingly grown-up manner precluded any more questions.  "Thank you
very much.  Would you mind turnin' your back a minute?"

He moved away and looked out of the window.

Sheila Pat with trembling hands turned up her skirt and grasped the
dangling petticoat beneath, but as she did it, a wicked black head
emerged from beneath the table, and wicked white teeth closed on the
flannel and pulled--pulled.

"K.K.!  I'll _whip_ you!  Drop it!  Oh, _drop_ it, K.K.!"

But whether it was that the Atom dared not raise her voice above a
whisper, or whether K.K. just felt specially naughty--anyway, she did
not leave go.

And Sheila Pat's proud soul was filled with very real agony.  With a
despairing "Please don't turn round--I'm goin'!" she fled out into the
hall, stumbling along, with K.K. and her petticoat dragging her
sideways.  She sank on to the lowest stair and let her petticoat go; she
watched K.K. drag it down her legs, across the hall.  He had treated her
so beautifully!  He had behaved as if she were a grown-up.  All had gone
so well--and what would he think of her now?  A vision of Biddy
O'Regan's numerous babies trotting about with various garments dangling
about their legs rose up before her eyes.  Only babies let their things
come down, the Atom thought, and she shuddered.

K.K. brought the petticoat to her with a conciliatory wag, and laid it
gently in her lap.  The Atom took no notice.  She was sure he had
forgotten how she had tumbled down the stairs, and now--K.K. pushed a
moist nose into her hand.  "Oh, K.K., is it lovin' me you are after
_that_?"  She pointed to the petticoat with a short but tragic finger.
K.K. laid a sweet head on her knee, with upturned eyes adoring.




                             *CHAPTER III*


"I'm getting quite fond of our Stronghold," said Nell. "That's crooked,
Denis!"

"What if it is, and you an artist!  I'm not going to take the nail
out,--no, not if it's standing on its head.  Isn't my thumb pathetic
pulp already?"

"_Gerrls_ can't use a hammer!  _Gerrls_ always hit more thumb than
anything else!" from the foot of the step-ladder came an impish voice.

"That you, Atom?"  Denis flung himself down the steps. Sheila Pat fled,
squealing, down the stairs and into the garden.

"_What_ we would have done without this room to call our own, my brain
refuses to imagine!" Nell observed.

"Wasn't it just like mother to think of it?" queried Molly, wistfully.

Nell nodded.

"And our teas!  Thank goodness, Aunt Kezia desires us to have tea up
here, in case some of her friends turn up. It's something to be looked
upon as savages, after all, Mol!"

She was digging a drawing pin through a mounted photograph of a
beautiful Irish wolf hound.  She touched his head softly with her finger
before she turned away.  He was Denis's dog, and he had been left at
Kilbrannan with friends.  She picked up a photograph of her little
chestnut mare.  She stood with it in her hands, then turned suddenly and
put it away in her drawer of the table.  The hound was still Denis's,
but Acushla was sold--sold to the same friends who were taking care of
the dog.  Nell clinched her teeth.  The other horses had been sold, too.
She gathered up a pile of photographs taken by herself and Denis, and
laid them in her drawer.  For a minute the sick longing for them all,
for her home, her father and mother, gripped her and held her silent.
Then she turned to Molly.

"Hark at Sheila Pat's accent!  Whose benefit is it for?"

Molly looked out at the dingy scrap of garden.

"There's that little boy in the garden next door.  Denis is chasing
Sheila Pat."

They reappeared in the Stronghold, the Atom's wild little face emerging
from beneath Denis's arm, her legs and arms kicking and struggling.
Denis seized the tablecloth, hauled it off with a clatter of falling
lesson books, drawing board, pencils, and paint-box.  "Hang on, Nell!
We'll toss her."

Miss Kezia, entering the room unnoticed, was surprised to find her
youngest niece bouncing in the air.

"Aunt--Ke--"  With a burst of terrified laughter Molly smothered the
rest of the word.

Denis and Nell, holding the tablecloth, with Sheila Pat enthroned in its
middle, turned innocently to their aunt.

"I came," said Miss Kezia, "to see if there had been any accident."

"Won't you sit down?" suggested Denis, with a wave of his disengaged
hand toward a chair.  "There's been no accident at all.  What made you
think there had?"

"The noise!"  It was snapped out like the click of a box being shut.

"Noise?"  He looked surprised.  Sheila Pat, tailor-wise in her
tablecloth, regarded Miss Kezia thoughtfully.

"May I ask," resumed her aunt, "if you are playing a game?"

"Jolly good game," Denis agreed smilingly.

"And it necessitates the smashing and throwing to the floor of--those?"
pointing majestically.  "And the ruining of the tablecloth?"

"Not necessarily, Aunt Kezia; Sheila Pat's only an Atom--I don't expect
she'll tear the cloth."

"You will not have another, in any case," Miss Kezia said. A little
flush rose to Denis's brow; his mouth shut into a thin line.  Then he
looked at Nell.

"Nell, amn't I right in understanding that this is _our_ cloth?"

"Quite, Denis."

"Have--" exclaimed Miss Kezia, suddenly, "have you been knocking nails
into my walls?"

"We'll pull them out," said Nell coldly, "since you object to them."

Miss Kezia actually smiled a grim little smile.

"How very Irish!  What good would that do, when the holes would still be
there?  It is most tiresome!  It ruins the walls!  It really--good
gracious!  Call your dog off!--Go _away_!"  Miss Kezia, red-faced,
undignified, was striving wildly to extricate her skirt from K.K.'s
teeth.

For a few moments Denis and Nell's attention was engaged elsewhere; each
was rearranging assiduously the folds of the cloth.  And in the middle
of it Sheila Pat sat and chuckled softly.

Then Denis turned.

"K.K., drop it!" he said sternly, and K.K. obeyed with a sad little
wriggle.

"It's a most objectionable dog," Miss Kezia said breathlessly. "I insist
that you make no more holes in my paper!"  And she marched from the
room.  Denis sank on to the lounge, stuffed the cushion into his mouth,
and wildly waved his legs in the air.

The door reopened--Nell made a frantic dash at his legs.  "Of course you
understand that I will not have that guinea-pig brought into the house!"
Miss Kezia said, her eyes on Denis, who at the sound of her voice
dropped the cushion and sat up with a ludicrous face of dismay.

She retired once more, and for a minute there was dead silence in the
room she had left.  Then Nell fell into Denis's arms.  "Oh--you
gossoon!"

On the floor, where she had been ignominiously dumped, Sheila Pat sat in
her tablecloth and hugged Kate Kearney.

Denis arose and seized her pig-tail.

"Let's attack the garden now, Atom."

Nell was looking out of the window.

"There's that pretty little lame boy next door.  I'm going down to talk
to him."

"I don't want to come, thank you," Sheila Pat said to Denis.

"Eh?  Why not?"

"A person," quoted the Atom, "may have reasons."

"You're a lazy Atom," said Denis, and strolled out of the room.

"The little boy's gone in," Molly observed.

The Atom slipped out of the room and downstairs after Denis.  Denis sat
on an old up-turned wheelbarrow and studied a book on shorthand and the
garden alternately.

"It's a problem that requires a good deal of thought," he observed
lazily.  "A back yard: Item--a patch of bare ground adorned with ten and
a half blades of grass. Item--a narrow ridge of clay running parallel
with the walls, in which flowers are presumably meant to grow.  Item--a
careless mosaic of china, etc.  Item--a wheelbarrow. Item--a dustbin.
Item--a diminutive Atom ready to turn it all into an elysium of sweet
flowers."

"Go on with your readin'," said the Atom, refusing to smile, and
valiantly beginning to pick up bits of china.

"The spirit is willing, but the brain is weak.  I've come to a
standstill.  Hulloa, K.K.'s over the wall!"

"It was a cat makin' faces at her.  If that little boy's there, he'll be
very frightened."

"Why on earth should he be?"

"Oh, I know he will," with dire meaning.

Nell came dancing out into the garden with Molly.

"You're out of step, Mol!  Kate Kearney, I saw you leap the wall after a
poor pussy!"

She dug her toes into the wall and looked over.

"Can you give me that wicked little black bogy?" she called.

Sheila Pat turned and trotted towards the house.

Denis, on his wheelbarrow, eyed her inquiringly.

"Where are you off to?  Going to exercise the Snowy-Panted Pearl?"

The Atom refused to acknowledge the question.  She always did refuse
when he miscalled her Pearl so rudely.

Over the wall Nell accepted a limp Kate Kearney from the little shy,
fair-haired boy she had accosted, and held a conversation with him.

"Nell!" came a faint voice.  "Nell!  I'm caught!  Oh, _Nell_!"

"Someone is calling," observed Denis, from his barrow.

Nell looked round.

"It's Molly.  I thought she was here.  Stewart, you hear that cry?  It
comes from the mouth of my sister Molly. She has a predilection for
falling into slop-pails, jamming her fingers into doors--  _Coming_!"
she sang out in response to a louder cry.  "Good-bye, Stewart.  Another
time you must see my littlest sister."  She dropped to the ground.

Up in Molly's room she found wild confusion, and, in the midst of it,
Molly hanging out of the wardrobe.

"I'm caught, Nell!  Oh, it's killing me!  You might have hurried--oh!"

"Hair this time," observed Nell, untwining and pulling, while the house
echoed with Molly's screams.  Her hair had caught in the hooks of a
blouse hanging on one of the pegs. They were safety hooks, which were
one of the trials of Molly's life.

When she was freed at last, Nell looked round the room littered with
boots, hats, frocks, collars.

"Whence?" she said, with a wave of her hand.

"I was looking for my thimble."

"Oh!" said Nell, expressively.

"Nell," shouted Denis, from somewhere, "come up and look at these
beastly grey collars!"

She ran up to his room.  The laundress was a grievance of his.

She sat on his bed and sympathised; then she observed, "Denis, tell me
what this Pennington is like."

"Haven't I told you?  I'll look a fine guy this evening in a dirty
collar!"

"'Not half a bad chap.  See him mimic old Tellbridge, his uncle--simply
ripping,'" mocked she, suggestively.

He laughed.  "Is that all I told you?  Well, it's his chief
accomplishment.  He's a little chap--very dark.  I say, I told you old
Tellbridge apologised that his wife hadn't called, because she's abroad,
didn't I?  He isn't a bad old chap, only he's got such a beastly pompous
manner. Pennington calls him Uncle Pom-Pom.  Well, he hasn't got much of
a bargain with me!"  He gave a quick sigh. "I do loathe figures, Nell!"
Then he laughed again. "Aunt Kezia has been talking to me about the
hours she expects me to keep!  'Pon my word, I believe she thinks I'm
not a day over eleven!"

At ten o'clock he came meekly home.

"Please, Aunt Kezia, I hope I'm not late?"

"I told you ten o'clock.  You are punctual."

He went up to the Stronghold.  He found Nell huddled over the
account-book.

"Well?" she said.

"Where's Molly?"

"Just gone to bed."

"What are you doing?"

She laughed.

"I'm _trying_ to do accounts.  I've been trying more or less all the
evening."

"More foolish you!  What's the use of accounts, anyway? If the money's
gone, it's gone!"

"Yes, but still--why, you see, Denis, we--we've just got to be careful
now, and I must see how our money dwindles when we never spend a
farthing!  And I can't get to-day right.  I come threepence short."

"Put it down to stamps."

"I do my accounts honourably!"

"I'll help you.  Read out items."

"Woman with baby--india rubber--watch for boy," she enumerated glibly.

"Eh?  Woman with an india rubber baby and a watchful boy?  How much that
little lot?"

She was surreptitiously trying to tear a leaf from the account-book.

"Fivepence," she said, "and there was the hair ribbon for
Molly--tenpence three farthings--that is one and threepence, three
farthings, isn't it?"

He reached out a long arm and captured the book.  On the leaf opposite
the items for the day, dangling, half torn out, was a pencil sketch of
Kate Kearney.

"I--I forgot," said Nell.  "I really didn't know I was doing it!"

"You know it's forbidden in this book," sternly.

"Plase, your Honour, I'm sorry."

"You've got her expression splendidly.  What had she been doing?"

"Eating Molly's hair-brush."

"Injured innocence.  It's ripping, Nell!  You'll be a second Rosa
Bonheur yet!"

She sighed.

He glanced at her quickly.

"We'll manage it somehow, old girl!"

"So we will!  I'll sit on the pavement and draw pictures in vivid
chalks, as a beginning, and with my earnings--oh, up and up I'll go--"

"To the Royal Academy--a studio in South Kensington--private
exhibitions--your photograph in all the papers--interviews--'The
charming young genius who has taken the artist world by storm greeted me
with a delightful amiability.  She afforded me a glimpse of a dimple and
a half.  I understand that her intimate friends are treated to three
whole ones--'"

"Oh, be quiet.  Tell me if I've done the adding and subtracting right."

"You have!  Nell, you're getting on.  Meanwhile, we're threepence short.
Three whole pennies!"

"Threepence is threepence."

He looked surprised.

"Are you sure?"

"I _can't_ think what it is."

"Account-book?" he suggested blandly.

On the occasion of Nell's first essay at accounts, she had worried and
fought and wrestled over a missing sixpence, till Sheila Pat brilliantly
bethought her of the account-book, price sixpence.  Thereafter the
account-book was a family joke.

"_Chestnuts_!" said Denis, in solemn tone.

"Oh, you jewel!  That's it.  Now I'm beautifully right."  She scribbled
it down.

He picked up a piece of stick, smooth and round.  Nell glanced at it and
laughed.

"That's Molly's!  She's been sitting with a bit of hair rolled round it
all the evening!"

It was the ambition of Molly's life to have waving hair like Nell's.
Secretly she tried many ways to make it curl. Pencils, pens, bits of
stick, all were requisitioned in guilty secrecy.

"Now tell me about your evening, Denis.  Who was there?"

"Uncle Pom-Pom and Pennington, of course.  Chap named Lancaster, and a
queer little man--Yovil, I think his name is--all grey and black
bristles.  He used to be the elocution master at Pennington's school.
He writes, Nell!"

"Oh, what does he write?"

"There was an article of his in last month's _Imperial_ on Coleridge.
I'm going to get it.  Pennington goes to his place every Tuesday--in the
evening; some of the other boys who used to go to his school go too, and
they talk and read and recite.  No fee, you know; he just does it
because he likes it--has an idea that when you've got to leave school to
be a beastly clerk or something of that kind, you let your reading slip.
Pennington says he's cranky on Billy S.!"

"Don't be so irreverent, Denis!"

There was a pause.

"And the other--Lancaster--what is he like?"

"Decent sort of chap, I should think.  Don't know much about
him--awfully quiet--hardly spoke to any one.  Pennington seems to think
a lot of him.  He beat me at billiards, anyway.  Father's got a pot of
money. There, that's all I know."

Nell sat gazing into the fire.  Suddenly her mouth dimpled.

"Denis, what do you think I've been doing this evening, beyond
accounts?"

"Daubing."

"No. I've been looking at things from Aunt Kezia's point of view."

"Oh, lor'!" he said heavily.

"And I've come to the conclusion it's pretty hard on her to have four
practically unknown relatives dumped down on her."

"We're not sacks of coals," he remonstrated, "and she offered for the
post.  And we efface ourselves as much as possible.  And we're rather
nice, you know."

"Sheila Pat went down to Herr Schmidt this evening, and requested him to
take her for a walk, as she felt stifled. He did take her, and Aunt
Kezia disapproved of that! Molly bet me I couldn't run up and down the
stairs six times without a pause.  I did it, and she disapproved of
_that_.  Poor Molly, trying to jump a hurdle,--two chairs arranged by
me,--fell and hurt herself badly.  She disapproved of _that_.  Certainly
she broke the chair," reflectively; "still, it seems to me Aunt Kezia
disapproves of everything."

"And on top of all that you fall to pitying her!  I can't rise to your
heights at all, my dear."  Nell, chin in hand, puckered her brow
thoughtfully.

"Why, you see, from her point of view we're a horrid nuisance--"

"Oh, are we, indeed?  I wish Sheila Pat could hear you! Nell, if I don't
go to bed at once, you'll arrive at the point of considering our
respected aunt a martyred saint, and us the bad little imps who got her
her crown!  Well, anyway, the imps are useful!  For isn't it a grand
thing to be a martyr, and aren't we helping her to be one?  I'm going to
bed."

"Lazy!"

"My dear, remember I am now a working man. Remember what my earnings are
to go towards--"  He broke off suddenly.  "Nell, why can't I write a
book or a play, and make my fortune?"

"You will soon."

He shook his head.

"I can see it's all rubbish almost as I write it.  No, Nell, you'll have
to give us back Kilbrannan, alone!"

"I won't, Denis!  You know you're much too conceited to let me do it.
Mustn't you have your finger in every pie? And don't speak as if it
isn't ours still!  It's only let--"

"So it is!"  He seized her round her waist.  "We'll do it together--you
and I--turn 'em out--buy back all the horses--and meanwhile--meanwhile,
we'll economise like a couple of German Jews!"

She looked at the jar of great golden chrysanthemums, at a large box of
Fuller's chocolates he had brought them that day, and at her
account-book where the money seemed to run away so mysteriously.

"Oh," quoth Denis, "it isn't the things like that that use up the money;
it's the little things--copper here, copper there; 'Take care of the
pence and the pounds will take care of themselves,' you know.  That's
sound commercial sense."

"Is it?" said Nell.  "It _sounds_ all right."

"It's as right as your hand which isn't your left.  I'm going to put out
the lamp."




                              *CHAPTER IV*


"Sarah," said Sheila Pat, "who's in the drawing-room?"

"Mrs. Barclay, miss."

"Oh!" said Sheila Pat.

"Bread and butter--cakes--best milk jug--smallest spoons--that's right."
Sarah's muttering ended with a sigh of relief.

"Sarah, are you very busy?"

"I've took the things up, miss, and now I've got to wash up the dinner
things."

"Sarah," wheedlingly, "let me help you."

"Oh, no, miss, certainly not, and you oughter be upstairs, too."

"I don't wish to be there," with dignity settling herself on the table.
"Sarah, haven't you any silver to clean now?  I do like cleaning
silver."

"Oh, no, miss, and you're making yourself dirty and all!"

A pause, while Sarah bustled about and the Atom watched her.

"Sarah," sternly issued the small voice, "I inquest you to give me some
work _at once_!"

"Oh--oh, certingly, miss, yes, miss."  Sarah, in a flurry, routed out
some shining pots and pans and gave them to the Atom to dust.  Sheila
Pat took them and examined them carefully.  There was a long silence,
while Sarah made up the fire and left the room to fill the coal box.
When she returned she saw the Atom sitting in stiff idleness beside her
pots and pans.

"What, done them already, miss!  Well, you _'ave_ been quick; and how
nice and bright you've made them look, to be sure!"

The Atom fixed her with a stony eye.

"I haven't touched them," said she.

Sarah collapsed in dire confusion.

"I may wear short dresses," resumed the Atom, coldly, "my fam'ly is
resisting about that,--but I am not a _baby_, Sarah Jane Jones."

Meekly and in awe, Sarah provided her with real work in the drying of
cups and saucers and plates.  The Atom unbent over her rubbing.

"Have you any brothers, Sarah?"

"Yes, miss, two."

"How old are they?"

"One's three and t'other four and a 'alf, miss."

"Have you any sisters, Sarah?"

"Yes, miss, three."

"How old are they?"

"Two and five and seving, miss.  I'm a long way the eldest in the
fambly.  There's three died between me and Gladys.  Father, 'e died
eighteen months back, too."

"Your mother has had a lot of trouble, Sarah."

"Yes, miss, and she's mostly ailing."

"Would she like some cough medicine, do you think? You see I've got some
in a bottle upstairs.  I didn't use it all."

"Thank you, miss.  She takes in sewing when she's able, but they pay
that bad!  Threepence for a blarse! Did you ever, now?"

The Atom fidgeted uncomfortably.

"I don't _quite_ know what a blarse is, Sarah, not _quite_, you see."

"Why, a bodice as don't fit, miss, just 'angs loose, and you pull it in
round the waist with a belt or somethink."

"Oh!" said the Atom, recognising "blouse" now, but too polite to
explain.

"No," pursued Sarah, "_I'm_ the worker of the fambly!"

The Atom eyed her gravely.

"You're not _very_ big and strong, are you?" she queried doubtfully.

"Oh, there's a lot of work in me, miss, more'n you'd think.  I can go on
and on, you see.  Why," proudly, "lots o' times when my back's just
aching all over and my legs and feet too, I can work just as well as
_hever_!"

"That's spunk, Sarah," said Denis's voice round the door.

"Oh, sir!  Oh, Mr. Denis!"  Sarah, in her confusion, let fall a plate.
"Oh!" she cried, "four pieces! Oh!"  She wrung her hands.

Denis laughed.

"My fault, Sarah; put it down to me."

But the poor little maid-of-all-work had no smile left in her; her sharp
little face was puckered and drawn into ludicrous lines of woe; tears
stood in her pale eyes.  "'Alf a crown at least!" she moaned beneath her
breath.  "I'd never match it under!"

Denis glanced sharply at her.  "What do you mean? You talk as if you
will have to pay for it!"

"So I do, sir!  Ten pounds--washing done out--pay your own breakages--no
beer--no followers," she rattled off glibly.

"Do you mean Aunt Kezia makes you pay for everythin' you break?"
interposed the Atom.

"Yes, miss!"

There was scorn in Denis's eye; he drew a half crown from his pocket.

"I broke it, Sarah," he said gently.  "Would you mind getting the new
one for me?  You'd bargain better than I should.  Come on, Atom,
everyone's asking for you."

Sheila Pat held back.

"Is the goody-goo up there, too?"

"The what?"

"The little lame boy."

"No; only his mother.  Hurry up!"

They left Sarah half weeping over his magnificent kindness.  Denis
little knew how from that moment he was a young god--a prince in a fairy
tale--a hero--to the romantic Sarah.

Up in the drawing-room a stiff little party sat nursing empty cups.  In
vain Mrs. Barclay tried to unstiffen it. Her eyes met Nell's, and a
gleam of amusement shone in them before she discreetly veiled them
beneath decorous lids.

Miss Kezia was cross.  She had been taken unawares. With a queer kind of
heavy hospitality, she liked to know when a visitor was coming, that she
might have cakes and scones of all sorts freshly baked.  To-day she had
not known, and there was nothing but bread and butter and half a dozen
small cakes.  So she sat, stiffly disapproving, and refused to unbend.

Sheila Pat marched in, calm and cool, greeted Mrs. Barclay with her most
pronounced accent, took her seat upon a chair, pulled down her skirt,
and surveyed the room.

"I have a little boy not much older than you," Mrs. Barclay began
pleasantly.

"Sure I'm knowin' that already."

"He wants to know you very badly."

Dead silence.

"I hope you will be friends--you and he."

The Atom wriggled on her chair; then,

"I don't care for children much, thank you; that is," her hopeless
honesty impelled her, "not some children!"

Nell broke in hastily, "I have spoken to him over the wall."

"So I heard.  He is rather lonely.  We do not seem to know any nice
young people."

Denis suggested, "_Used_ not to know?"

She laughed.

"I stand corrected.  Well, I hope we shall soon know very well some very
nice young people!"  She rose to go.

"Will you come in to-morrow afternoon?  Early--about three?"

"Oh, thanks--if Aunt--"  Nell looked inquiringly at Miss Kezia.

"I have no objection."

"When will _you_ come, Miss McAlister?  It is so long since you have--"

"I have not much time for gadding about, thank you."

"Mind," Mrs. Barclay turned back to the others, "you are all to come!"

Clear and distinct spoke Sheila Pat.

"'Tis engaged I'll be, Mrs. Barclay."

"What do you mean, Sheila?" demanded Miss Kezia, frowning mightily.

"I shall be helping Sarah, thank you."

"What maggot have you got into your head now?"

"'Tisn't a maggot at all," calmly.  "I wish to do it. Sarah's a very
good girl--for London, that is--and she has too much work entirely."

"Sheila, when I wish you to help in the menial work of the house, I will
ask you to do so.  Tell Mrs. Barclay at once that you will be very glad
to accept her kind invitation."

The Atom heaved a most palpable sigh.

"I will come, then, thank you," she amended her aunt's words.

"Of all the rude little grumps!" Molly attacked her later on.

"I don't care!  I do erject to goody-goos!"

"Who is a goody-goo?"

"Why, that silly little Stewart, of course."

"How do you know?"

"Know, is it?" scoffed the Atom.  "Hasn't he got big blue eyes and fair
hair and a lame leg?  Sure I know the sort!" her pig-tail jerking
angrily.  "And I just can't bear them, Molly O'Brien!"

"I don't see how you can tell.  Denis has blue eyes--"

"Oh, _Denis_!" in a tone of strong contempt for Molly's lack of
understanding.  "There are eyes and eyes!"




                              *CHAPTER V*


"Is my pig-tail quite tidy, Nell?"

"There isn't a hair out of place, Sheila Pat.  Atom, do let me do your
hair nicely just for once."

"I prefer a pig-tail, thank you."

Nell disappeared into the wardrobe in search of a skirt. When she
emerged she stared incredulously at the Atom.

Sheila Pat was wriggling her head into a pink cotton frock.

"What on _earth_ are you putting that on for?"

"I prefer it to that," with a nod at a loose white cashmere frock lying
on the bed.

"Are you mad, Sheila Pat?  Why, it's November. Where did you dig it up
from?"

"One of the trunks.  Will you hook it, please, Nell?"

"Indeed, I won't.  Take it off at once.  Don't be so silly."

"I'm never cold.  Do let me wear it, Nell."  Sheila Pat laid her
delicate little face wheedlingly against Nell's arm.  "Do let me."

"I can't, asthore.  You'd catch cold."

When the Atom indulged in her rare coaxing she was hard to resist.

"I'll put my coat on, too, Nell!"

But Nell was firm.

"No, Sheila Pat.  And why do you want to wear it, anyway?"

"It's just a little longer than that one.  Why, I show my _knees_ in
that, Nell!"

"What's it matter if you do, you goose?"

"I do not _like_ showin' my knees.  And I want pertickly to look
grown-up to-day."

"Why?"

"Persons," quoth Sheila Pat, austerely, "can't take liberties with
grown-ups.  They can't talk to them if you don't wish them to," her
pronouns getting somewhat mixed.

"Whom don't you want to talk to you?"

"That little boy--Stewart."

"But why not?"  Nell peered at her laughingly through her hair.

"I know him.  I've got him at home in that book Mrs. Norton gave me,"
laboriously wriggling out of the much-desired cotton frock.  "He saves
up all his pocket money in a money box and buys himself a new coat with
it.  And he'd sooner learn his Catchykism than play cricket.  I know
him!"

"Well," said Nell, tying on her hair ribbon, "of all the nasty little
hard-hearted wretches you're the worst!"

"Oh, I'm very sorry he's lame," with belated consideration, "but I
_won't_ have him talk to me!"

"I don't believe he's a bit goody, poor little chap, and, anyway, why
should he want to talk to you?"

This aspect of the case had not struck Sheila Pat.  She considered it as
she pulled on the cashmere frock.

"Amn't I Irish, then?" she decided gloomily.  "Of course he'll want to
talk to me."

"I'm going to see how Molly's getting on," Nell said.

In Molly's room chaos greeted her.  On the floor stood a drawer, its
contents scattered everywhere.  The bed was strewn with blouses, hats, a
pair of shoes, collars, while Molly herself, red-faced, dishevelled,
attired in skirt and petticoat-bodice, was wildly turning out another
drawer.

"Ready, Mol?" inquired Nell, blandly.

"Oh, don't, Nell!  I can't help it!  I _can't_ find my grey blouse--the
one with the white piping--I've hunted _everywhere_!"

"In the box?"

"N-no!  I forgot!" making a dash at the dress basket.  "Oh, don't laugh,
Nell.  I looked _everywhere_ else!"

"Of course you did, when we decided to keep all our nicer blouses in
there!  Do hurry up.  Here, I'd better do you up now.  Fancy all this
fuss just to go next door!  I was going in my blue flannel that I had on
this morning, but Aunt Kezia gave such stringent orders.  Isn't it
absurd?"

"Ridiculous.  Oh, you're pinching a bit of neck in!"

Nell, at the door, looked back.

"Sure you've got everything?  Your hair ribbon?"

"Yes, everything."

When Nell and the Atom were ready they went back to Molly's room.  Worse
chaos than before greeted them. Molly was crawling under the bed.

"I've lost one of my shoes!  Oh, I'm _so_ hot!  And now I suppose my
nose will get red!"

The Atom, wise beyond her years, found the shoe in a hat box, and they
sallied forth.

"Thank goodness, we're not needing hats and things," sighed Nell, "or
we'd never start at all!"

"_Nell_," on the next-door doorstep came an agonised whisper from Molly,
"I've forgotten my waist belt!"

In the drawing-room Sheila Pat ensconced herself behind a table, and
kept a wary eye on Stewart.  Presently his mother sent him across to
her.  He came and stood in front of her; the Atom gazed over his head.

Nell caught her eye and frowned meaningly.

"Sure, thin, haven't you a tongue at all?"  Sheila Pat obediently opened
the conversation.

"Y-yes."

"Why aren't ye usin' it, thin?"

"I--I--don't know."

"Well!" said Sheila Pat.

The boy's fair little face flushed scarlet.

"I--I've got a rabbit!" he burst out desperately.

"Um! what colour is it?"

"Fawn and white.  Come and look at him."

Sheila Pat hesitated.  Longing to see the rabbit fought with
disinclination to be alone with Stewart.

"If you'll promise not to talk goody, I'll come," she said cautiously.
Suddenly he changed; he turned on her a small, passionate face.

"I don't want you--you little beast!"

Sheila Pat gasped, and grew slowly red.

"You are very rude," she said with tremulous dignity.

"I don't care if I am!  D'you think you're the queen or what?  _I_ don't
want to speak to you.  I can't bear you!"

He limped away to the other end of the room.

Sheila Pat sat very still and quiet for a while, then she rose and went
after him.

"I think, perhaps, I wasn't _very_ perlite," she said stiffly.

"Come and see my rabbit," he rejoined.

Sheila Pat went with alacrity; she was reflecting satisfiedly that the
goody-goo little boy of her imaginings would never have called her "a
little beast."  Still she was not completely reassured.  Together they
examined the rabbit, and the Atom told him all about her Pearl, and
nothing "goody-gooish" appeared about him.  But as they went back to the
house for tea, she sounded him cautiously.

"Are you fond of cricket?" keeping a stern eye on his face while she
awaited his answer.

He hesitated.

"No," he said.

"_I knew it!_"

"Awful clever of you!" he muttered sarcastically.

"I s'pose," she went on as they reached the door, "you'd sooner be at
your Catchykism now than cricket?"

"Yes," he said.

"I knew it!" gasped the Atom, and fled into the house before him.

From a far corner she presently accosted her hostess.

"Is that a silk _blouse_ you're wearin', Mrs. Barclay?"

"Yes, my dear."

"Did you give more than threepence for it?"

"Sheila Pat!" stammered Molly.

"A little!"  Mrs. Barclay's fair little faded face was vividly amused.

"I'm glad you did," with grave approval.  "But Sarah's mother only gets
threepence for the ones she makes, and she's always ailin', with a large
fam'ly of babies and her husband dead and three more dead between Sarah
and the next one."

"Who is Sarah?"

"She's just the little maid at Aunt Kezia's.  She's a real good
worker--for a Londoner, of course, I'm meanin'!"

"And her mother makes blouses?"

"Yes, and only threepence for them, but perhaps they wouldn't be silk."

"No, they wouldn't be silk, but it is shocking to hear how badly they
pay for such work."

"Is it at sales?" Nell queried, looking very wise.

Mrs. Barclay smiled.

"Oh, no, my dear.  The big shops and wholesale places buy hundreds of
blouses that they sell off cheap, and that is what they pay for the
making of them.  What is that noise?" she broke off.

"It's rats!" opined Stewart, shyly.

But it was Kate Kearney scratching at the door.  When she was let in she
came, wriggling and wagging, lifting great pathetic eyes to the faces of
her own people.

"You bad little K.K.," laughed Nell.  "What door did you get in at, I
wonder?"

Kate Kearney trotted sedately over to the Atom's corner, and Stewart
followed her with a piece of cake.

"Mind she doesn't bite!" jeered the Atom, rudely.

He flushed, but did not answer.  He gave K.K. two pieces of cake, then
turned politely to Sheila Pat:--

"Would you like to give her some?"

He held out the cake.

His politeness--to her a sure and distasteful sign of goodyness--riled
the stormy Atom past bearing.

"Is it _afraid_ you are?" she cried scornfully.

He raised his arm with a sudden fierce gesture and flung the cake
straight into her face.  It bounced off her small nose and lit with a
thud on a chair.  In silence they glared at each other for a minute;
then he turned to Kate Kearney, thrust his hand right into her
protesting mouth, and walked off.

Sheila Pat sat trembling on her chair.  Twice that afternoon she had
been insulted, and by the goody-goo!

During the leave-takings Sheila Pat and Stewart coldly ignored each
other's existence.

In the hall at No. 35 wrath awaited them in the shape of Miss Kezia, who
had just returned home from some shopping.  She faced them dramatically,
her tall, thin figure drawn to its full height.

"You mean to tell me that you left _my_ house, and made an afternoon
call on a friend of _mine_--like _that_?" she cried, pointing a long and
disapproving forefinger at her nieces.

Molly clapped terrified hands to her waist.

Through Nell's mind there darted two lines of one of Denis's nonsense
verses:--

    "She stood, a tall, and bony queen,
    And eyed her subjects very keen."


"What's wrong with us at all?" demanded the Atom, indignantly.

"No hats!  No coats!  No gloves!  House-shoes--"

"Ought we to have put on our outdoor things just to go next door?"
exclaimed Nell, opening her eyes wide.

"Of course you ought!  It is most reprehensible!  You are not in the
wilds now!  No one thinks of going into the street in London without
being properly clothed--"

Nell almost chanted aloud:--

    "'Her tongue it wagged, her tongue it wogged,
    Her subjects then she up and flogged!'"


"Eileen," Miss Kezia broke off sharply, "don't look so idiotic!  You
look as if you think it is funny!"

"Do I, aunt?" said Nell, meekly.

"I cannot think how you, at least, did not know better," pursued her
aunt.

"You see at home we are as often without hats and things as with them."

"Well, please to remember you are in London now!"

Miss Kezia turned and marched up the stairs.

      "'The Queen turned tail and up she went,
      Her subjects then their clothes did rent!'"

chuckled Nell, and sank down laughing on to a hall chair.

The Atom disappeared in the direction of her Pearl. It was a cherished
conviction, on her part (and on no one else's), that the Pearl moped in
her absence.

"Where's that boy Denis, I wonder?"  Nell ran up stairs two at a time.

In the Stronghold she found a torn slip of paper on the table: "Off to
Lancaster's to dine.  Who sneaked my nail-brush?"

"Molly, was it you?"

"Oh, yes, I meant to put it back.  Mine tumbled into the slop-pail full
of dirty water."

Nell wandered into Denis's room.

"Just like Molly's, only it's masculine chaos instead of feminine!"  She
laughed softly, and began to tidy up. When Miss Kezia heard of his
absence she drew down her long upper lip.

"Who is this Mr. Lancaster?"

"A friend of Pennington's--"

"_Mr._ Pennington, if you please.  Is that all you know about him,
Eileen?"

"Well," said Nell, demurely, "'decent sort of chap, I should think ...
awfully quiet ... father's got a pot of money--'"

"Eileen O'Brien, how dare you speak vulgar jargon like that to me!"

"Me, aunt?" with injured innocence.  "I was only quoting Denis."

"Then kindly do so no more.  I object strongly to the tendency of the
modern girl to use slangy, slipshod, vulgar English.  I will have none
of it in my house.

"I hope Denis will not come home late," she pursued. "I do not like his
going out in this way--without my permission."

"He isn't a baby, Aunt Kezia!  And, anyway, you were out this
afternoon."

"Some boy of whom I know nothing--"

Nell interrupted impatiently, "He's a friend of Mr. Tellbridge's!  Denis
met him there."

"Why didn't you explain that before?  Of course Mr. Tellbridge would
have no one--Sheila, are you feeding that dog again?"

"Yes, Aunt Kezia."

"Then leave the room at once!  You really are a most tiresome little
girl!"

The Atom arose and walked from the room.  It was her way of obtaining
release when she considered a meal had lasted sufficiently long.

"I will not have late hours kept in my house," said Miss Kezia, with a
final snap of her lips.

When ten o'clock came and went without bringing Denis, Nell began to
grow anxious.  Half-past ten was Miss Kezia's hour for going to bed.  At
twenty-eight minutes past ten she "locked up."  She never varied the
time by a minute, unless by special arrangement with Herr Schmidt.

Listening behind the door of the Stronghold, Nell heard her lock up as
usual and retire to bed.  She slipped out and down into the hall.  From
beneath Herr Schmidt's door there came a thin line of light.

She softly unbarred the chains and lifted down the burglar bell; then
she stood listening for Denis's step.  Suddenly Herr Schmidt's door
opened.  Nell, in the darkness of the hall, gazed expectantly at the big
figure outlined against the light of the sitting room.  She crept back
and hid behind a coat hanging on the stand.  The next moment hands
fumbled against her throat.

"Ur--ur," she gurgled irrepressibly.  "Oh, you tickled me!"

Herr Schmidt stumbled back.

"Himmel!" he gasped.  "Ach, what is it?"

Nell emerged from the coat.

"Oh, hush!  Aunt Kezia will hear you.  She _mustn't_ catch me down
here."

A door opened overhead.  A voice called over the balusters.

"Is that you, Herr Schmidt?"

"Yes, Miss McAlister, it is I.  I stumble and make a noise.  I beg
pardon."

"It is granted.  Good night, Herr Schmidt."

"You're a brick, Herr Schmidt," said Nell's pretty voice.

"A brick?  A good fellow, is it?"

She nodded.

She stood in the light now, and he looked at her benignly.

"You are playing go-hide-and-find?" he suggested.

She shook her head.

"Hush!  I'm waiting for my brother--to let him in. Aunt Kezia never
dreams he could be so depraved as to be out after twenty-eight minutes
past ten, so she has gone to bed with a serene mind."

He looked rather troubled.

"Your aunt is a worthy lady."

"The horse is a noble animal."

He peered at her through his spectacles in ludicrous bewilderment.  Nell
was half sitting on, half leaning against, the marble slab of the hall
table.  Her head was tilted back; the light caught the ends of her
roughened hair and turned them into gold, and they made a sort of halo
round her mischievous face.

"Well?" she said.  "You're not shocked, are you? Why, he's seventeen,
Herr Schmidt.  And you know if they don't dine till--say--eight o'clock,
he can't very well be in by half-past ten, now, can he?  Isn't it very
rude to rush away as soon as you've eaten all you want?  I'm sure I've
seen that it is--in a copy-book or somewhere."

"You will, perhaps, do me the great honour of waiting in my room,
Fraeulein?" he asked, giving up the other question in despair.

"I can't, thanks.  I want to hear him come, so that I can stop his
knocking, you see."

"I will leaf my door open to gif you a little light, hein?"

"All right, thanks; you might, if you don't mind."

He stood looking down on her in obvious trouble.

"You will be angry if I tell you not to be naughty to your aunt?"

"Oh, no, I won't.  It amuses me, Herr Schmidt."

He sighed, and retired to his room.  In a few minutes he reappeared,
beaming over his spectacles at her.

"See, I haf ze sweets.  Young laties like ze sweets, hein?"

He was carrying a little crumpled paper bag with a few fruit drops in
one corner.  His simplicity touched her.  She took two with a hearty
"thank you."

"Oh, there he is!"  She ran to the door and softly opened it.

"Whence this sepulchral--" Denis began cheerfully.

"Hush!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Bad little boy to be out at eleven o'clock, eh?" he whispered.

"Be quiet, chatterbox!"

"Goot night," said Herr Schmidt.

"Eh?"  Denis looked surprised.  "I hadn't seen you."

"Herr Schmidt has been keeping me company while I waited for you,
Denis."

"Has he?  I say, are _you_ allowed to be out after half-past ten, Herr
Schmidt?"

"I haf no one belonging to me to care," he said pathetically.

"We'd give him Aunt Kezia," suggested Denis, _sotto voce_.

They retired upstairs.

"I say, Nell, I'm beastly hungry," he declared.

"Greedy, didn't they give you a good dinner?"

"Rather!  Lancaster did the thing in style.  Old man's away.  Lancaster
seems to pretty well boss the show."

"Why are you hungry, then?"

"Well, I've been out since then."  He looked at her with twinkling eyes.
"Tearing around in a motor makes you hungry, I can tell you!"

"A--motor!"

He nodded.

"Jolly fine one, too.  And at this time of night when all the squares
are pretty well deserted it is fine."

"How many dogs did you run over?"

"Dozen or so."

"I'd just have thought he'd have a motor!"  She couldn't have sounded
more scornful if she had said a wheelbarrow.

"Well, can't you give me something to eat, anyhow?"

"The kitchen's unprotected.  Let's try."

Downstairs they crept.

"Oh, more bolts!" groaned Nell.

In the kitchen Denis stumbled over the coal-box and sent the coal
flying.

"Oh, Lor'--and I've got no matches!  _Nell_!" flinging out and catching
her as she stumbled forward.

She subsided on to the chair she had fallen against.

"Don't make such a row.  Nell, there's a rat or something running up my
leg!"

"Is--is it a _beetle_, do you think?"

"Very likely."

"Oh, Denis!" she drew her toes up on to the chair.

"Where do people keep matches, Nell?"

"I expect they're locked up!"

"_No_!  Well, I can't go to bed on an empty--um--chest."

"Sleep on your back, then."

"Unfeeling twin!  Dash it all, what a beastly hard chimney this is!"

"And what a soft head it came in contact with."

"You're helping a lot, aren't you?  Sitting in the seat of the scoffer.
Here, come out of that.  You've got to help!"

"Denis!  Oh, _do_ be quiet!"

He had seized her round the waist.  "If you don't promise to help look
for those matches, I'll roll you into the scullery where the black
beetles live!"

"I promise, Denis!"

She came gingerly forward and gave a scream.

"_Denis_!  I trod on something horrid and soft!  Oh, Denis!"

"A rat, I expect.  I thought I heard a squeak.  Eureka! Got 'em!  Now
for the larder or pantry or storeroom or whatever it is--"

"I'm going to see what I trod on first.  Light a match, Denis!"

He lit one and discovered her standing staring at the floor, her skirts
gathered up.  "Oh, 'twas an iron-holder!" she cried.  "A dear, innocent
little iron-holder!"

In the end they found half a loaf of bread and a pot with a little
raspberry jam in it.  Nell found the jam and was immensely proud of
herself.

"By all that's wonderful, a hap'orth of jam in the bottom of a pot!
Left out--unlocked--for the first thief to break in and steal!"

"Don't call nasty names.  That'll do.  I'll be a cripple soon--I've
burnt all the tips of my fingers off already. Come along."

Upstairs he sat on his bed and munched bread and jam.

"He's got horses, Nell!  One--a ripping chestnut--made me think of
Acushla."

He picked a crumb off his knee and ate it thoughtfully.

Her lip curled.

"And he prefers a motor!" she ejaculated.

He did not heed her; he still looked thoughtful.

"But it's a gloomy house, somehow.  I think London's a gloomy place.
But he's got a room--his own--quite different.  You'd go cracked over
it.  Crammed with carved wood things, Indian, Japanese--ivory, too.  And
a jolly Grand--  Hulloa, what's that?"

A sepulchral whisper came floating up the stairs.

"Are you children not in bed yet?"

He went out on to the landing.

"Just off, Aunt Kezia.  Let me carry your candle for you."

"I can carry it myself, thank you.  You ought to be in bed and asleep at
this time of night."

"Me isn't s'eepy, auntie, weally," he lisped, and Miss Kezia almost
relaxed into a smile.

"Nell," he said, returning to his room, "you're to go to bed at once--a
baby like you!"

"Oh, oh, have you been talking to her like that?"

"Like what?"

"L-look in the glass!"

He looked and grinned.

"''Twas a grim and gory sight,'" he quoted.  "'It hath a manly look
which pleases me.'"

"A baby look, you mean.  Babies always smear their cheeks with jam."

He was engaged in twisting his tongue out and round in a vain endeavour
to catch the smear of jam.

"Nell," advancing his cheek, "lick it off for a chap. Pity to waste it."

She boxed his ear.

"Now I won't buy you a box of Fuller's chocolates!"

She sobered.  She was discovering, to her amazement, that money, even
when never spent in larger sums than a few shillings or even sixpences,
had a mysterious and alarming way of dwindling.

"No more sweets, Denis!"

He went across to the wash-hand stand.

"I was going to buy you a three-shilling box of chocolates, and yet not
make our fund a penny the poorer!"

"Is it a riddle?"

He nodded.

"Give it up.  It's too late to solve riddles."

He was rubbing at his cheek with a sponge.

"I won it.  I, even I, Denis, the twin of Nell, won it in a sweep-stake.
Now see how businesslike I've grown, Nell.  I pulled off six bob really,
but it was a shilling to enter each time--that's two bob--and the time I
lost, another, so I reckon I won three altogether.  See?"

"What a beautifully easy way to get three shillings!"

"I might have lost two instead.  Seems to me there's an idea somewhere
there, Nell--work it on a bigger scale, and you'd have me turning those
beggars out of Kilbrannan."

"But suppose you lost?"

"Oh, I shouldn't.  Anyhow, I'd stand to win so much more than I'd lose.
I'm going to think it out.  There are places abroad."

"Denis, you'd get taken up!  I remember dad reading about a case--"

"Not me," airily.

Nell punched his pillow thoughtfully.  "I don't like it, Denis," she
decided.  "It's too risky, and--and--"

"Well?"

"I'm sure dad and mother would call it gambling! There, I feel like a
goody little sister in a book."

He laughed.

"You don't look the character, anyway.  And you're to go to bed."

"But--but you won't--"

"Oh, I may break the bank of England yet, who knows?" teasingly; "go to
bed and dream of me, asthore."

"Is it nightmare you want me to have?"

"Race you to your room--in the dark!"

Two minutes later Miss Kezia's door opened once more. Dead silence
greeted her.  She went a few steps up the stairs. All doors were shut.
Miss Kezia was sleepy, even more than she was cross.  She went back to
her bed.

As Nell laid her head on the pillow she muttered, "Of course it was that
tiresome Lancaster!"




                              *CHAPTER VI*


Molly was huddled up on the hearth-rug, chin on knees, staring with her
great soft eyes into the fire.

"Nell, do you think I'll be like the ugly duckling and grow pretty?"

"You're not ugly enough."

Molly sighed.

"I _wish_ my hair curled!"

"Molly," said Nell, flinging down her pencil in despair of seeing any
longer without the lamp, "your soul is full of the vanities of life.
'Be good, sweet child, and let who will be--pretty.'"

"It's so easy for pretty people to talk like that!"

"I'm bowing, Mol, I really am--only it's so dark it's lost on you."

"I've a good mind to start saying 'prunes and prisms' all day long, my
mouth's so huge!"

"But it's so Irish, asthore!"

"I hate you," said Molly.

Nell stuck her elbows on the table, and her chin into her hands, and
studied in her mind the painting of the old cab horse.  It was such a
glorious painting--there was such depth--his muscles--the veins in that
leg were wonderful--in her mind.  She sighed.

"Nell," in the firelight Molly blushed, "I'm going to soften Aunt
Kezia's heart!"

"What?  Soften her heart, is it?  You'll have to soften her head first,
my dear."

She began to laugh softly.

"How are you going to set about it, Mol?"

"Like they do in books.  Oh, Nell," Molly's romantic soul lent
enthusiasm to her tone, "you know they always do! However hard and grim
and horrid she is, the niece, or whoever comes and stays with her,
gradually twines herself round her heart--"

"She must be an acrobat, then," put in Nell, sotto voce.

"And alters her whole nature.  You see, I'll be awfully sweet and
nice--I'll do things for her.  They always pick up her handkerchief and
fetch her spectacles and put down her shoes to warm when she's coming in
with wet feet, and things like that.  You needn't laugh, Nell!  It's
something to do--I'll try awfully hard.  I think," Molly's pretty voice
trembled, "I think mother would like it."

Nell jumped up.

"All right, only don't go and put your great, noodlish heart into it,
Mol!  For she's not the right material, old girl!"

"I like her awfully grim and hard at first," enthusiastically. "It's a
pity I'm quite so frightened of her, though.  I just can't help it--she
makes me shiver in my shoes!"

"Nell," from a dim corner came Sheila Pat's voice, and a squeak as she
moved.

"Where are you, Atom?  Yes?"

"Nell," in very judicial tones, "is it very rude to ask a person not to
talk goody?"

"Rather riling, I should say."

Silence.

"Shall we light up?" said Nell, lazily.

"Nell, is it very rude to ask a person if he's afraid?"

"More than rude, Sheila Pat, downright insulting!"

"Oh!"

Pause.

"But he wasn't an _Irish_ person," ingenuously.

"Was he English?" gravely.

"Yes."

"No one can say Englishmen are cowards, Sheila Pat. They don't
understand us, but they're not cowards."

"Is it rude to ask a person if he likes his Catchykism better than
cricket?"

"It's unkind, Sheila Pat."

Pause.

"Is it more unkind if he--if he is lame, Nell?"

"Miles worse.  Downright mean."

After a long pause:

"May we have the lamp now?  I wish to write a letter."

"Who to?" inquired Molly.

"To a 'quaintance."

Nell rose from the hearth-rug.

"Nell," the Atom pressed close and spoke in a loud whisper, "a person
can't be _very_ goody-goo if he calls you a beast and throws a piece of
cake at your nose, can he?"

"Good gracious!"

"Hush!" the Atom seized her arm, almost trembling with terror of her
dignity being in danger.  "I didn't say _my_ nose, Nell!  Or _my_
beast!" incoherently.

"Of course not.  Where are the matches?"

Sheila Pat took a long while over that letter.  Her delicate little face
downbent over the sheet of paper flushed and paled several times before
it was done.  Her heart and her dignity fought it out again and again.
At last she evolved the following:--


"DEAR MISTER STUART

"this leter coms hopin you are wel i do not bare maliss and perhaps i
was not very perlit which i regret bein a lady i hop.  I therefore beg
to apologise and will never menson the cak or the beest but i shud dye
of rag if you tel anyone of that grate indignity with kind regards your
very truly Miss Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien i must be honourable
and ad that this spelling is not qite all my one bein helped by Miss
Eileen O'Brien."


She addressed it to "mister Stuart barclay essire," and going downstairs
desired Sarah to take it next door.

Sarah was forbidden to leave the house without permission, but, in face
of the Atom's tremendous weightiness, she fled.

Sheila Pat returned slowly to the Stronghold, her face weary with
overmuch thought.  Nell was surreptitiously studying a photograph of
Acushla jumping a stone wall, with herself on her back.  Denis had taken
it with his Goetz camera.  It had been a glorious morning in early
spring.  She remembered the vivid blue of the sky, the wonderful golden
mist that had hung over the Ballymara hills, the feeling of utter fresh
joy of life that had filled her and Acushla--

"Hulloa!  How quiet we are!"  Denis invaded the room with cheery
breeziness.  "Nell, rub noses!  Mine's frozen. I say, the atmosphere's
too exalted altogether for me."

"Perhaps we're doing penance," she laughed.  "Denis," she broke off,
"whatever have you got?"

He was swinging a large square hat box to and fro.

"Catch hold!"

He swung it across to her.

"It's for you, old girl."

"For me?  Give me the scissors, Molly!"

Presently she pulled from a nest of tissue paper a great soft brown felt
hat, with one long brown feather drooping on the brim.

"_Denis_!  Oh, isn't it lovely!"

"Put it on."

She put it on, and turned to him, irresistibly pink and pretty.

"But 'tis _wicked_, Denis!  And _why_ did you get it?  And where--"

"It's lovely," exclaimed Molly, with a big sigh.

"Oh, I heard you talking to Molly about having to wear up a hat you
hated with your brown suit--"

"I thought you were fathoms deep in your Latin!"

"Ah, but I wasn't.  So I asked Lancaster if he could tell me of a decent
hat shop, and he told me of one in Bond Street where his cousins go.
You should have seen his face when I asked him whether he wasn't coming
in with me!  He never dreamt I was really going to get it.  Don't see
why, myself.  'It's full of Frenchified women!' he gasped. So it was.
They were awfully sweet to me--tried on the hats, but, by Jove, what
hats they were, Nell!  I found this one myself.  Now isn't it just the
colour of your suit? Let me look at you."

He turned her round by her slim shoulders, and eyed her critically.  She
was adorable in it.

"I--I shall take it back, Denis.  I suppose they'd give me back the
money?  How much was it?"

"Don't ask rude questions.  And don't be a goose! They wouldn't think of
taking it back."

"Oh!" her voice rose with an irrepressibly joyful lilt. "Are you sure?"

"Quite puffeckly sure.  Don't I shop well, now?"

"But I _could_ have made the old one do!"  Her dimples refused to be
repressed.  "Denis, what a dream that feather is!  And the sweep of the
brim--"

"Oh, stow it, Nell!  Great Scott, spare me more!  I've had enough of
hat-jargon to last me a lifetime.  'So chaste, isn't it?  So pure--so
simple--but of an elegance so chic!  A poem, Monsieur, an idyll--a
three-volume novel!  It expresses so much!  Worn so--cocked over the
right ear--it is gay, insouciante, of an impudence, Monsieur!  So--down
in front--demure, sweet, to suit the freshness of a young demoiselle--'"

"Denis, you're making it up!"

"Oh, well, that's the sort of stuff they talked--more or less.  Wish old
Lancaster had come in!  He's gone off to meet his governor at
Paddington."

"What does he _do_, Denis?"

"Who, the old man?  Used to sell pigs or tallow candles or something."

His eyes twinkled.

"He made his money in something like that.  I forget what it was.
Believe it was lamp oil!"

"That accounts for it."

"Eh?  Accounts for what?"

"Oh, everything," vaguely.

"What d'you mean, Nell?"

His tone was peremptory.

"Oh, I don't know," she hedged.  "But I didn't mean his father, anyway.
I meant _him_.  What does he do, Denis?"

"Nothing, apparently."

"But why isn't he at school or college or somewhere?" her voice was
scornful.  "Do you mean to say he just hangs around all day, and does
nothing?"

"Suppose so."

"Well!" said Nell.

"Suppose he knows his own business," suggested Denis, slamming his books
down on to the table.  "Hadn't you better put that hat away?"

Nell walked off with the hat.

"Of all the great, lazy _boobies_!  And he dare--he _dare_ make Denis in
a rage with _me_!"

"Nell!"

"Sheila Pat, I didn't see you.  What are you doing?"

"Sarah told me that she always lengthened her skirts by _letting down_
the hem.  What does it mean, Nell?"

Nell explained absently.

Sheila Pat looked thoughtful.

Nell went back to the Stronghold and bent over Denis's shoulder.

"Shall I dictate for you?  Are you going to practise shorthand?"

"No," grumpily.

"Denis, asthore, the hat's _so_ lovely!"

He burst out laughing.

"You rank little duffer.  Well, tell me why you were doing penance when
I came in."

"We weren't.  I merely suggested that _perhaps_ we were. I meant because
we've done nothing all day but get into Aunt Kezia's black books.
First," she ticked off the items on her fingers, "we heard a band
playing--"

"Oh, Denis," interposed Molly, "it was playing 'The Girl I left behind
Me.'"

"So we rushed out, as surely anyone with feet _would_ rush out to hear a
band.  It was at the corner and we rushed along and stood and
listened--"

"And

    "'By came a Flappyjack turning out her toes,
    Forth she spurted anger like a garden hose.'


"Eh?"

"But the rest doesn't apply--

    "'But the boys of Bally more had kissed the blarney stone,
    Soon her anger melted--she sighed, Asthore!  Ochone!'"


"Well, she sighed neither the one nor the other.  Oh, she _was_ angry!
No melting of her!  Next," she ticked off another finger, "we conceived,
or I believe _I_ conceived, the brilliant idea of an obstacle race on
the garden walls. Oh, Denis, 'tis such fun!  You see, the boughs of the
trees next door and the summer house are the obstacles, and then when
you try to pass each other, one is always bound to topple off.  I'm
bruised horribly, and Sheila Pat fell into the garden next door, and
then of course Molly must needs roll off--"

"Into the dust-bin for a wager!"

"Of course; and the tin lid smashed in, and she went in after it, and
_yelled_!  And I laughed so I slipped all down the wall into the garden
and scraped skin off everywhere. And Aunt Kezia came out!"  She stopped
with a vulgar but expressive little whistle.

"You see, Sheila Pat was in the garden next door; and halfway through
Aunt Kezia's lecture her head came bobbing up!  That made matters hotter
than before.  O dear, she has got a lot of breath to waste!"

"Why," inquired Denis, judicially, "weren't you doing your lessons?"

"We were.  Those were the interludes.  And oh, Denis, we've been locked
into separate rooms all the afternoon till a little while ago!  It was
because we tried tobogganing down the stairs.  We took a leaf out of the
dining-room table.  Aunt Kezia was out, so 'twas quite safe.  It's not
at all bad, only the leaf had silly little ridges, one at each end, that
caught on the stairs in jerks, so we had to put it shiny side down.
Molly kept getting stuck--wedged in between the balusters and the wall,
and of course she did it just when we heard Aunt Kezia's key in the
front door.  It was such hard luck, because I'd tobogganed down once
straight into Herr Schmidt (we hadn't dreamt he was at home), and he
didn't mind a bit--"

"He gave such a hop that all the house shook," put in Sheila Pat, with
deep enjoyment.

"Well, I banged right into his poor shins," said Nell, reflectively.
"I've come to the conclusion that he's a dear old man, though he _is_
the lodger!  And he sat down rather suddenly on the hall chair.  We had
to flee and leave the leaf wedged," she added sorrowfully.  "We hoped in
vain that Aunt Kezia would turn into the dining room or kitchen or
somewhere, but she didn't.  Not she!  She smelt that leaf!  And she
stumbled over it, which made it worse. And when she came to lecture us
her bonnet was all crooked. _Oh_, she was in a temper!  Here's Sarah,
and tea!"

"How," she asked pathetically, later on, "can I feel good and sorry when
she's scolding us with _such_ a long nose? Her upper lip comes down and
it drags her nose down with it.  It's like a barometer--I can always
tell how her temper is by the length of her nose!"

"You've tired the Atom out, anyway," teased Denis.

Sheila Pat was on his knee: her head had lain motionless against his
shoulder for the last half hour.  She sat up as if worked by a wire.

"I'm not tired, Denis O'Brien!  A person has things to think about
sometimes!"

"Hulloa, thought you were asleep!"

The Atom struggled to get off his knee, but he held her fast.

"Please let me go, Denis!"

"You're not angry with your one and only brother, Sheila Pat?"

"You shouldn't be sayin' rude things," she wavered. She adored Denis so
deeply that she could never hold out long against him.

"It was all her fault to-day, anyway," declared Molly. "She just
_wouldn't_ settle down to anything!"

"Couldn't," murmured Nell, with a glance at Sheila Pat's great eyes.

Denis suddenly began to laugh.

"It was awful sport this afternoon!  Lancaster came to the bank.  Old
Tellbridge and Jackson were out, and we got fooling around.  I was
standing on a chair spouting that thing I made up--you know--

    "'Now Micky Magee wi' his piggy so wee
    Went courtin' the fair Molly Moore--'


"Remember?  Well, I put a lot of expression and action into it--chaps
were roaring, and as I finished, out from the manager's room burst that
little chap--Mark Yovil! Wasn't it killing?  He had heard it all!  Owned
he'd been listening.  And he's quite struck!"  He gave a shout of
laughter.  "He is, 'pon my word!  He says my voice is made for reading
aloud and reciting!  I feel like a little saintly chorister or
something.  Lancaster and I have promised to go to his place next
Tuesday.  They're going to start on Henry V,' and I'm to be Hal himself!
_Now_ what do you think of your twin, Nell?"

"That he's getting so puffed up that soon all that remains of him will
be a farewell pop--oh--"

Along the passages her fleeing voice echoed, "I haven't any run--left in
me--_oh_, Denis!"




                             *CHAPTER VII*


It was a damp close day.  Nell felt stifled and cross, and was ashamed
of the feeling.  The deep depression that sometimes seized upon her held
her now.  The longing for her home gripped her in a sudden fresh access
of misery. She sat on her bed and tortured herself by imagining
strangers in all the rooms--about the grounds.  As she always did, in
these depressions, she lost sight of the fact that her home was let and
not sold.  She told herself they had not a home now.  She said that they
were outcasts, and would never set foot in Ireland again.  She wondered
keenly why they did not all die.  Turned out of home and country; father
and mother hundreds of miles away; poor and desolate, why did they
continue to live?  And laugh!  She was quite sure just then that she
would never laugh again.

She rose to make her bed.  The depth of her depression had a physical
effect, making the mere folding of her nightgown an act that required a
strong effort.  At Kilbrannan no weather had affected her beautiful
young health and strength.  She did not realise that the sudden and
tremendous change in her way of living was bound to tell on her, more or
less, at first.

She made her bed languidly.  When Molly burst into the room she actually
jumped.

"I'm growing nervey in my old age!  If I believed in presentiments, I
should think something horrid was going to happen.  I feel
presentimenty."  Of course she did not believe in presentiments; she
reminded herself so several times that morning.  Just as, of course, she
wasn't the least bit superstitious.  She knew a great many of her
country-people were, but not she!  When she found herself inadvertently
walking beneath a ladder, she laughed.  "If I were superstitious, I
should feel horrid that I had done that!"  At luncheon Denis helped her
to salt, with a mischievous grin as he did it.

"I shall bring you sorrow now, old girl!" he murmured, "unless," his
eyes twinkling, "you throw some over your left shoulder, you know."

"It's likely I would!" said Nell.

She fell to thinking how funny it was that all on that one day she had a
presentiment, first of all, that something bad was going to happen; then
she walked beneath a ladder, and then Denis helped her to salt.  If she
were superstitious, how uneasy she would be!  But she wasn't, so it
didn't matter.

Miss Kezia picked up a letter that had come just then. Molly went a
fiery red, glanced at Nell, then blurted out, jumping up and knocking
her chair over, "Do let me fetch your spectacles, Aunt Kezia!"

Miss Kezia turned her head slowly and looked at her, with a good deal of
offence.

"I never wear spectacles, Molly; I do not require them. Pray sit down."

"Oh!" gasped Molly, and sat down, covered with confusion.

"I do not know," pursued Miss Kezia, "if you intended to be impertinent.
If so, it was very feeble."

The whole table except Molly and her aunt were too convulsed to offer
the former any aid.

Molly sat and stared into her plate, the fiery red of face and neck
refusing to die down.  In books, she reflected miserably, the aunts
always wore spectacles.

After luncheon, when Denis had gone back to the bank, Nell tried to go
on with a painting she was doing of Mrs. Barclay's tabby cat.

"To think that I should have come to cats!  To be so hard up for models
that I have to seek refuge in a _cat_! Oh, what a great, stupid, moon
face you've got, Tim! K.K., come here.  You needn't be jealous, my dear.
You're worth all the cats in the world."

Kate Kearney refused to budge.  She sat in a corner, her back to the
room.  It was her way of showing dignified disapproval.  Denis called it
sulks.  Poor K.K.--she had been called sternly to order when she teased
the cat.  No one seemed to object to the cat's swearing at her.  Very
well.  It was an unjust world.  She sat and presented the room with a
beautiful black shiny back and long drooping ears.

For no obvious reason, except that it was a horrid day, somehow, and
horrid things seemed to come naturally into one's mind, Nell fell to
worrying over Denis and his ideas on the lottery question.  He often
teased her on the subject, declaring that though he had not gone in for
any more just yet, he was working it all out in his mind, and would be a
millionnaire some day, in spite of her.

"Oh, K.K., let's go out!  Cats are too much for me! So are studies
to-day."

A quiver tingled all along that sedate little black back.

Nell laughed.  "Very well, we'll go without her, won't we, Sheila Pat?
We'll go for a walk--a _walk_!  Good-bye, Kate Kearney!"

It was too much for her dignity or her sulks.  With a frenzied howl she
hurled herself on them.

"Nell," Sheila Pat looked thoughtful, "don't you think it would be
perlite to ask that little boy next door to come with us?  But I won't
walk beside him," she added hastily.

The breach had been healed between them, to a certain extent.  Stewart
had responded suitably to her letter that she was "sorry," but the Atom
was still cautious; the Catechism and cricket question loomed always
before her.

She planted herself between Nell and Molly, and walked along with a
certain aloofness that kept him in his place.  He laughed and talked
with Nell, and the Atom listened.  In her rigidly honest soul she
confessed that he did not sound like a goody-goo, but there was always
that question of the cricket and the Catechism.

He came in with them and had tea.  Denis did not appear.  Nell found
herself making an effort to laugh and talk.  It took her back, with a
little shiver, to those bad last days at Kilbrannan.  Stewart avoided
the Atom's serious eyes shyly; he seemed much more at his ease with Nell
and Molly.

When he was going, Sheila Pat went down with him into the hall.  Nell
went, too, and Molly.  But Sheila Pat slipped out on to the doorstep,
and accosted him in an earnest whisper.  "Are you _sure_ you'd sooner
learn your Catchykism than play cricket?"

"Yes," he said with an obstinate jerk to his small chin.

Sheila Pat followed the others back to the Stronghold in silence.  Sarah
came up presently with a slip of paper in her hand.

"For you, miss," she said to Nell.  Nell opened it wonderingly.


"Don't know what time I'll be in, old girl.  Haven't a moment to write.
On the way to be a millionnaire.  Tell you when I see you.  Awful spree.
Don't let on to anyone.

"Denis."


It was scrawled in pencil, evidently in a frantic hurry.

"What is it?" Molly inquired.

"Only a note from Denis--to say he'll be late."  Nell spoke slowly.  She
twisted the paper in her hands with a feverishness, a restlessness oddly
in contrast with her slow speech.  She turned and went downstairs to the
kitchen.

"Sarah, who brought that note just now?"

"A boy, miss."

"What sort of boy?"

"A urchin, miss, up to no good, I should say."

Nell wandered aimlessly to the dresser and played with a plate.

"Did he look disreputable, Sarah?"

"Awful, miss," delightedly revelling in her word-painting, "sort of boy
the pleece 'ud be after, I should say."

"The police!"  Nell gave a queer little jump.  "Oh, Sarah, isn't it hot
to-day?"

"You do look pale, miss; it's a nasty un'ealthy day, an unlucky day, my
mother 'ud say."

"Unlucky!  Oh, why, Sarah?"

"Well, you see, miss, it was on just such a warm, unseasoning (Nell
supposed she meant unseasonable) day that father was run over and
killed."

"Oh, don't, Sarah!" Nell hurried away into the hall. She stood a moment,
hesitating.  A latch-key fumbled in the lock of the door.  She waited,
knowing it was Herr Schmidt.  Miss Kezia never fumbled.  He came in with
his heavy tread.

"Ach, Fraeulein, it is a bad day, eh?"

"Horrible!" she said.

He glanced at her and smiled.

"Poor Mr. Weather," he said, chuckling.  "We are angry when he is colt,
we are angry when he is warm."

"May I--may I come and talk to you a little, Herr Schmidt?"

"Oh, with such bleasure!" he beamed at her over his spectacles.

Nell went into his room and stood looking out into the dark street.

"I will light the lamp, Fraeulein.  Zere, now you can see me.  Will you
blease to sit down?"

She sat down.  "You--I suppose you know all about business and money,
don't you, Herr Schmidt?"  She had seized an ink pot that was on the
table, and seemed to be clutching it meaninglessly.

He smiled widely.

"They call me a goot business head, Fraeulein."

"Do you have good weather in Germany, Herr Schmidt?"

He looked rather bewildered.  The other question had seemed the opening
of a conversation on business matters. He replied with conscientious
length.  Nell seemed to be listening absorbedly; she left hold of the
ink pot.  She was wondering if she had artfully put him sufficiently off
the scent.  Denis would never forgive her if she were to talk of his
lottery to Herr Schmidt.

"I suppose," she remarked casually in a pause on his part for breath,
"there are lotteries and things like that in Germany as well as here?"

Herr Schmidt had not finished about his climate.  He blinked his eyes
several times, then turned his mind to the new question.  He started to
give her a good deal of information on the subject.  He spoke strongly,
because he felt strongly about all forms of gambling.  Nell had clutched
hold of the ink pot again.

"And--and are there gambling places like that in England?" in a pause on
his part.

"Ach, yes, Fraeulein.  In the bapers constantly one reads of the bolice
appearing at the scene and taking them all to brison."

"Oh!"  Nell jerked the ink pot suddenly and a few drops spattered her
hand.  Herr Schmidt produced blotting paper, and wiped the spots off
carefully.

"Thank you very much."  She rose and went to the door.  "Good-bye, Herr
Schmidt."

"Goot-bye.  You, berhaps," with a curious, wistful glance over his
spectacles that made him look like a great baby, "would not care to eat
a biece of cake?"

"Not now, thank you.  I--another time if I may."

The evening wore on slowly.  Nell twice put her ear to the little clock
on the mantel-shelf, thinking it must have stopped.

Molly, fathoms deep in "Monsieur Beaucaire," was blind and deaf to
everything else, but Sheila Pat eyed Nell shrewdly.

"Can't you be sittin' still at all, Nell O'Brien?" she demanded
impatiently.

Nell started and grew red.

"I like walking up and down."

"Do you like pickin' up that jogglefry book and lookin' at it every time
you pass the table?"  The Atom's sarcastic little tongue was sharp.

But Nell squashed her with a guiltily unkind, "What's a jogglefry book?"

The Atom grew slowly scarlet.  After a little while she fetched the
dictionary, and wrestled with it indefatigably till bedtime.  She
hunted, her mouth set firmly, her brows frowning, all through the "J's".
She went to bed unsatisfied.  When Molly had been in bed a few minutes a
little night-gowned figure crept into the room.

"Molly!"

Molly gave a yell of terror.  "Oh, Sheila Pat, you did make me jump!
What do you want?"

The Atom stood shivering beside her bed.  "Molly, how--how'd you be
savin' Jog--you know all about pennyshulars and capes and gulfs and
things?"

"Geography, do you mean?"

"Yes.  Jography.  Is that right?"

"Yes," sleepily.  "Go back to bed."

In the Stronghold Nell waited for Denis.  It was nine o'clock.  She went
into a front room and looked out into the street.  She wondered vaguely
why everything sounded so clear and loud; why the scent of a sandal-wood
box was so sharp.  She did not know that every nerve was on the stretch,
that she was strung up till every sense was painfully acute.  As she
stood at the window she heard a hubbub of men's voices; the noise of
many feet.  They passed into the distance, across the top of Henley
Road.  She saw them in her mind--men being taken to the police station.
She turned suddenly and ran into her bedroom.  Sheila Pat was asleep.
She seized a hat and coat, flung off her shoes, put on others, and crept
down the stairs.  Miss Kezia was not at home, but in the hall, just
going out, Herr Schmidt stood drawing on his gloves.

"I haf to take a book to a friend," he said, his eyes questioning her
surprisedly, as his tongue was too polite to do.

"Yes?" she said vaguely.  She went to the door.

"Is your brozzer outside waiting for you, Fraeulein?"

Up went Nell's head.

"No, Herr Schmidt."

He moved a step so that he blocked her way.

"He is coming down ze stairs?"

"No. I am going out alone.  Please let me pass, Herr Schmidt!"

There was a little pause.  Nell pulled restlessly at the throat of her
coat.

"It is nine o'clock, Fraeulein.  Young laties do not go out alone at
that time."

"Let me pass!" her eyes blazed; she stamped her foot. "What business is
it of yours?  How dare you stop me!" she said haughtily.

"I am frightened," he declared simply, "but I dare because I see you are
young and a little girl who does not understand--"

"But I must go, Herr Schmidt!  Please, oh, please don't stop me!  It is
important--"

"Poor little one, no, I will not stop you.  I will kom also."

He moved aside and began to open the door.

She said coldly, "It--it is a private matter!"

"Zen take your bruzzer, Fraeulein."

"He is out."

"Zen I know.  See, I will be blind, Fraeulein.  I will be deaf.  I see
noting.  I hear noting.  I do but take care of you, Fraeulein, hein?"

"Very well," she said impatiently.  "I want a cab."

He beamed.  "Zat is right, meine liebe.  All will be well now."

Nell was quivering with nervous impatience.  She gave the driver Ted
Lancaster's address and sprang into the cab. She was conscious of the
heavy jolt as Herr Schmidt climbed in--so slowly, oh, so slowly!  She
had lost all sense of proportion in her mind.  She was absorbed in a
sort of wild terror, a foreboding, and her one idea was to get to Ted
Lancaster.  It was all his fault.  He would know. Probably, almost
certainly, it was at his house it was all going on.  She did not wait to
wonder what Denis would think of her appearance on the scene.  She had
only room for one thought--to get him away, to warn him, before the
police came.

The cab stopped at last at No. 16 Gowan Square, and they got out.  Herr
Schmidt rang the bell, and after an interval the door was opened by a
sleepy-looking maid.

"Mr. Lancaster, miss?' He isn't at home.  Oh, Mr. Edward--yes, he's at
home.  Will you come this way?"

They entered the handsome hall; the maid opened a door and showed them
into a small sort of anteroom.

"What name, please?"

But Nell was strung up to such a pitch now that she could wait no
longer.  She followed the maid across the hall.  In answer to her knock
a lazy voice responded, "Come in."  Then, as she opened the door: "You
don't mean to say you've come, Thompson!  Why, I've only rung once!"

Over the maid's shoulder Nell saw a large, handsome room; a table still
littered with the dinner things; a huge fire, and in front of it a
chair, over the top of which she could see a piece of smooth, dark head.
On the mantel-shelf reposed a pair of patent-leather shoes; she had a
glimpse of the legs they belonged to, of a pair of black silk socks with
a little green pattern on them, and a haze of blue smoke.  She saw it
all in a lightning flash, and Denis was not there!

The pleasant, lazily sarcastic voice had drowned the maid's words.  She
began again.

"Thompson's out, sir, and it's a lady to see you."

"A lady?"  Neither the head nor the feet moved.  "Oh, I say, Mary, it's
the Pater she wants."

"She said you, sir."

"Don't you know her?"

"No, sir, and--and she's _here_," in a desperate voice, suddenly
becoming aware of Nell's proximity.

"Here!"  Down came the legs; up jumped Ted Lancaster.

"Oh, I say!"  He stood facing Nell, red and uncomfortable. He gave his
hair a surreptitious pat and flung his cigarette into the fire.  Then he
turned on Mary.

"Why did you show this lady in here?  Where's Thompson?" he demanded
angrily.

"He's out, sir, and--and--"

The sudden apathy of disappointment that had come over Nell broke.

"She didn't show me in here.  I followed her.  This room will do.  I am
in a hurry."

The maid disappeared.

"Where is Denis?"  Nell's voice broke the little silence in measured
accents.

"If you will come into another room--"

"No, thanks.  This room will do."

He pushed a chair toward her and gave his tie a pull.

"Where is Denis?" she repeated, not noticing the chair. She stood facing
him, her slim figure drawn to its full height, her head thrown back.

"I--I'm sure I don't know--won't you sit down?"  He drew his hand
nervously over his hair.  "Do you mean O'Brien?"

"Whom else should I mean?  Where is he?"

"'Pon my word, I don't know!  I--_won't_ you sit down?"

"Hasn't he been here this evening?"

His rueful brows mounted higher and higher till his forehead was all
little creases, which, oddly enough, Nell remembered afterwards.

"No--no, he hasn't--  But I saw him--about--about--"

"Oh, would you mind being quick?" she broke in irritatedly; her cheeks
were a vivid pink, her eyes shone. Ted, looking at her, suddenly burst
out, "I say, are you O'Brien's sister?"

"Oh, no, his aunt!"

It wasn't a dignified retort, but the extreme and very scornful
exasperation in the sarcastic inflection made him redden to the roots of
his hair.

"When did you see him?  Oh, do tell me quickly!"

"I beg pardon.  It's--er--a trifle disconcerting," a gleam of humour
shot into his grey eyes, "rather unexpected, you know, and--er--all
that.  I saw him about three, I think."

"Oh!" gasped she.  "That must have been in the bank! You _know_--you
_must_ know--I don't mean that!  Where is he _now_?"

"I don't know," patiently.

"Don't know!  Don't you know anything, or don't you care?  I must find
him.  He--he maybe wearing handcuffs in prison now!"

Ted Lancaster put up his hand and rubbed his nose.

For the first time she noticed his coat.  It was a pretty coat--a loose,
silk smoking-jacket--but in some unaccountable way it was, to her, the
last stroke.  All her pent-up nervousness, her quivering impatience,
suddenly culminated in wild wrath against the wearer of that coat.

"Oh!" she cried, her soft voice low and passionate.  "It is all your
fault!  You invite him here--you suggest this hateful lottery business.
What do you care?  You make him gamble--but it doesn't hurt you.  _You_
don't need money--you aren't led on by the hope of winning a great heap
of money.  You only dabble in it.  It doesn't matter to you whether you
win or lose.  And you don't care if he loses!  Why should you?  You
don't care if he gets into trouble--if he's taken to prison!  Oh, no,
you're safe, so what does anything matter?  And now he has gone--gone
somewhere to make money, and I--I can't find him.  He is so careless--he
would laugh at the idea of a policeman coming after him.  It's all a
joke to you--I expect," her voice suddenly lost all its fire; "you are
laughing at me now--"

"I'm not!  I'm not a cad, whatever else I may be!"

She glanced at him, vaguely surprised.  His face had lost its
ruefulness, its uncomfortableness.  He looked suddenly older and
grimmer; his eyes stared at her angrily from beneath frowning brows.

She turned to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know--to find him."

In a few strides he was before her.

"You're not going out alone to look for him!" he observed quietly.

She drew a quick little breath.

"Now look here," he went on before she could reply at all; "I don't know
where he is.  I haven't an idea.  But I'm a good deal more likely to
find him than you are. Whether he'll be pleased to have me coming around
after him as if I'm his nurse is another matter.  I'll do it.  He'd be
angrier if you did it.  Although I'm the bad character you've just drawn
for my benefit, I promise I won't give information to the police you're
so afraid of.  I shall go first to Pennington's.  Anyhow, I'll find him
somehow.  But you've got to promise to go straight home first."

"Allow me to pass at once!"  Her face was quite white now; she spoke in
a low, desperately quiet voice.

"I'm not going to.  What's it matter if I'm rude to you? Isn't it only
in accordance with your idea of me?"

"Quite.  But it matters, because I am _determined_ to go and find him.
I am not alone.  I am with a gentleman," she added this unwillingly but
in despair.  "He will go with me."

"He'll take you home at once.  You'll excuse my saying that you're
acting very unwisely.  You're only keeping me--and doing no good.
O'Brien is probably at home now--or more probably," his mouth twisted
humourously, "out hunting for you.  Hadn't you better go?"

"Yes, I'll go!" her voice gave a little choke.  "I'll go, but oh, how I
_hate_ you!  If only I could show you how I hate you!"

"If that's all, you're showing me remarkably well, Miss O'Brien."

He turned and opened the door for her.  She went across the hall and
rejoined Herr Schmidt.  When she saw his broad, kindly face, his anxious
eyes peering over his spectacles at her, she felt a sudden fondness for
him, a weak inclination to cry.  She ran to him and slipped her hand
into his arm.

"Take me home, Herr Schmidt, please," she cried.

In the cab the reaction came.  Suppose she had been making a fuss about
nothing?  What would Denis think of her?  Two tears fell with a little
splash on her ungloved hands.  She turned suddenly to her big, silent
companion.

"Herr Schmidt, was I horrid to you about coming with me?"

"Ach, mein Fraeulein!  I intrude, I know---"

"Oh, you don't, you don't!  I think you have been beautiful!  I'll never
forget it!"

"Fraeulein, you are goot to say so, but I am troubled.  I haf ze unquiet
conscience about you."

"You needn't have, Herr Schmidt.  I--" with a sudden wild Irish change
of feeling, "I believe I have just been making a fuss about nothing!"
She gave a quick little laugh.  "Oh, Herr Schmidt, it's nothing at all!
Don't go making mountains out of it."

"Fraeulein, I will think of it as a mere young maid's episode.  Hein?  A
mere naughty prank."

She laughed almost hysterically.

"That's it, Herr Schmidt!"

She went up to the Stronghold and sat down wearily. Only five minutes to
ten now!  It seemed hours since she had left that room.  She sat doing
nothing--just waiting. She had not long to wait.  In a very little while
there was a ring at the door; she sat forward, listening breathlessly,
but she did not go downstairs.  Then she heard him coming up.  He strode
into the room, laughing.

"I say, old girl, such a spree!  Never enjoyed myself so much since I've
been in London!  Spoilt my gloves a bit!  Given 'em quite the dear old
look--"

"What have you been doing, Denis?"

"Driving a hansom!"

"A--is that _all_?"

"Rather!  Quite enough, too, with a brute like that! What's up, Nell?"

She had risen and gone across to the window; she was looking out with
great interest through one of the slats of the Venetian blind.

"Nothing.  Tell me about it."

"I'm ravenous, by the way!  Still, here goes.  I went with Pennington
about his camera--gone wrong--to the shop after I left the bank this
afternoon.  When I left him I came upon a hansom--empty--no driver--ugly
brute of a horse, sort of pink roan.  I was having a look at him when
out came cabby from the public house.  He had evidently 'met friends,'
as they say at home, and he hailed me as a long-lost brother.  Well, I
wanted to drive that hansom, wanted to see what it was like.  He
wouldn't let me--swore he'd be taken up and so should I if we were found
out.  I tipped him.  He hesitated.  I let out a flood of native
eloquence and another tip.  I might drive it to the corner and up the
next road and back to him.  I did. Then at the corner I called back to
him not to get anxious if I took a few hours getting to the end of that
road. Heavens, he did swear!  He started chasing me, too, but gave it up
when he found a lamp-post in his way.  I called out to him that all the
tips over sixpence I won by my eloquence I should stick to.  By Jove, it
was a spree!  I pulled my hat down over my eyes, turned up my collar,
and trusted to the darkness to hide my aristocratic features from the
bobbies.  Then it struck me you'd get wondering where I was, and I
pulled out a letter I'd taken down for old Pom-Pom to some man, and
which I'd forgotten to send off, tore off the blank sheet, scrawled that
message to you, shouted at a boy, threw it at his head, and sent him off
with it.  I've posted t'other half just now, by the way.  Then I
prepared to enjoy myself!  I've taken tons of people to the theatres and
restaurants.  I made that brute go!  But he nearly pulled my arms out of
their sockets every now and then--had a mouth like my boots.  Guess what
I made--thirteen and six!  Not bad, you know.  But I needed it all to
soften cabby's wrath.  He'd been in a dead funk that I'd made off with
horse and cab for good.  Oh, I can tell you, he was pretty eloquent!
But I soothed him a bit with the thirteen and six.  I wish I'd met
Lancaster a bit sooner," he broke off, "I'd have made him pay double
fare!"

"Sooner?" Nell said.

"Yes.  Met him just now.  He was apparently gazing at the house.  Fallen
in love with Aunt Kezia, perhaps."

"Did--didn't--he say anything?"

"Not much.  What d'you mean?"

"I--I want to tell you something, Denis.  I--I've been--mad, I think--"

"Thought there was something up.  What is it, old girl?"

Nell suddenly turned and faced him.

"You'll hate me," she said, and plunged into her story.

When she had done there was a little silence.  She had averted her eyes
from him in terror.  She knew how a boy of his age would loathe the fuss
she had made--how he would resent her going to Lancaster.  She turned
her eyes to him--he had buried his head in the cushion and was shaking
with laughter!

"Oh, poor old Lancaster!  Did you really slang him like that, Nell?  I
can see him."

She drew a deep breath.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"Poor beggar!" he chuckled.  "Oh, it's rich!"

Then he sobered.

"But--were you mad, Nell?  To make up bogeys in your mind and go rushing
off like that--"

"I don't know, Denis," she said humbly.  "I don't know what was the
matter with me to-day.  I--I never was so silly at home.  I felt sort of
funny all day, I think."

He was frowning.

"I don't like it at all--your going off to Lancaster like that!  It was
jolly decent of Herr Schmidt to go with you. You ought to have known
better, Nell."

"Yes."

He looked at her irritatedly.

"Don't be so beastly meek!  You know you've been awfully idiotic all
round.  And you've made me look a most consummate fool, and"--his mouth
widened again in spite of himself--"you've slanged poor Lancaster most
unwarrantably.  It was awfully rude, you know, and quite mad.  He really
hasn't been leading your little twin astray. As a matter of fact, it was
he who squashed my idea of making money by going in for big lotteries.
He's got a level head, and he reasoned it all out on paper and proved
some way or other that I stood, ten to one, or a hundred to one, or
something, to lose in the end.  I've only been teasing you when I talked
about going in for them.  I didn't know you were bothering about it.
And I never thought of the beastly things when I scrawled that note off
to you. I've never been in for any sweepstake or thing of that kind
except that one I told you of.  I hope you think you've made enough fuss
all round about nothing!"

Nell was silent.  She seemed to have no spark of spirit left.  She made
no defence.  Suddenly he rose and came to her.  He caught her shoulders
and shook her.

"There, never mind, you poor meek little goose!  You'd better be off to
bed, and sleep some sense into your soft old head."

She was struggling desperately against tears.

"I--I'm awfully sorry, Denis--and ashamed--I--I do believe I was mad--"

"Course you were," cheerfully, "temporary insanity. It's this beastly
London fog got into your brain.  I'll make it all right with
Lancaster--tell him you're sorry and all that."

She winced.

"Yes--please," she said.  "And--and you won't--feel that you--that I--"

"I've forgotten all about it already, old girl!" he declared generously.




                             *CHAPTER VIII*


"What d'you think I'm let in for, Nell O'Brien?"

"I don't know.  I haven't a guess in me.  Aunt Kezia has squashed me
flat.  I've low instincts, Denis,--think of that!  And no sense of what
is befitting a young lady, and all sorts of other things.  Oh, I'm a bad
character entirely!"

He flung down his hat.

"Think I didn't know all that already?  What made our respected aunt
discover it?"

"I'm sick of having no models!" she burst out passionately. "I haven't
touched a horse for weeks!  I--I'm just aching for the mere feel of
them!  A cat!  Beyond Kate Kearney I'm offered a cat!  It's like
offering a starving man a piece of sugar-stick!  Denis, try to draw a
cat! A heap of stupid, meaningless fur!  No muscles--no veins--oh, a
horse is so glorious to paint!"  She broke off with a quick little
laugh.  "Twin Nell 'pletely sorry," she said, using an old baby formula.
"Tell me what you're let in for?"

"Not till you tell me what you've been up to."

"Oh, it was nothing.  I saw a hansom waiting outside the corner house.
Ripping little chestnut, Denis," her whole-face kindled irresistibly;
"the driver told me she was almost a thoroughbred.  When a car passed
along the top of the road, she played-up beautifully.  Oh, the drawing
in her!  Well, I saw her from a window and seized up my sketch-book and
bolted up the road.  Now, is there any harm in that?  I asked the driver
how long he thought he'd be, and he smiled and said his fare was a
solicitor who'd come to a client's house on business.  'They charge for
their time, miss!' he said meaningly, so I rejoiced and started
sketching her in.  And he was such a nice man, too. He'd actually been
to the Dublin horse show a few years ago.  We had an argument about our
horses.  And he made her put her head as I wanted, and he told me how
he'd come across her, and then--oh, I'd left the hall door open, of
course, and Aunt Kezia--oh, Denis, you'd think I'd committed something
much worse than a murder!"

"Show me the sketch."

"I did one of her--and then several bits--quite rough. I'm going to
paint her into that picture I was doing."

"It's splendid, Nell.  What a cute little beast!"

"Now tell me what you've been let in for?"

"A speech!  A lecture!  Old Yovil has let us all in for it.  You can't
say no to him somehow--he sort of works you up.  Lancaster's swearing
like the wind round the Craffrone tower.  He says he must have been out
of his mind to say he'd do it, but he can't go back now.  It's to be on
the third.  Choose any subject you like--write it up--no notes,
though--and spout forth in his drawing-room to a long-suffering
audience.  There're six of us going in for it, and a ripping edition of
all the immortal Billy's plays for the winner."

"Which will be you," annotated Nell with conviction.

"Not it!  There's one chap--Morley--poetical sort of ass, who wears his
hair too long--he'll beat me in a canter, my dear, not to mention the
others."

"I'll come and hear you, won't I, Denis?"

"Wish you could!  But there won't be any ladies.  Only us and Yovil, you
know."

After luncheon a maid came to ask if the Atom might go and have tea with
Stewart.  Sheila Pat, her Pearl clasped beneath one arm, and a
spelling-book beneath the other, interviewed her in the hall.

"I'm not comin', thank you, Mary."

The maid hesitated.  "If you could, miss--"

"I have reasons of my own for not comin', Mary."

"Very well, miss, only--he's such a dear little boy, and you'd brighten
him up like."

Sheila Pat looked worried.

"Does he want me to come?"

"Yes, miss."

"Then I will!"  She heaved a big sigh.  "Unless," brightening, "Aunt
Kezia doesn't wish me to.  I'll go and ask her."

She came back sadly.

"I can come," she said ungraciously.

"Sarah!  Sarah!"

Down the stairs floated Miss Kezia's voice, stern anger in its tone.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sarah, I cannot find my house-shoes!  I have forbidden you to move any
of my things."

"I--I haven't touched 'em, ma'am!"

"She's getting trembly--like an earthquake, poor little hap'orth,"
observed Nell.

"Not touched them?  Then where are they?  They have disappeared!  Are
you sure--"

"Nell--oh, _Nell_, I--I put them on the dining-room fender to warm!"

"Molly!  Oh, you are too lovely for anything!  Hadn't you better go and
tell her?"

Molly cowered down in her chair.

"I daren't!"

"I will, then."

She turned to the door, but Molly jumped up.  "No, I'll go!"

She came tearing back presently and flung herself down into a chair.

"Well?"

But Molly buried her head in the chair-back and said nothing.

"Molly," Nell grasped her shoulder, "was she awful?"

"Y-yes, she was!" sobbed Molly.  "Oh, I did want to soften
her--and--and--oh, Nell," her voice suddenly shook with watery laughter,
"K.K. had been at her shoes and--_had eaten all the linings_!"

"Oh, how _delightful!_"

"It's awfully funny, but--oh, she's in a frightful temper!  She--she
says I'm an interfering--busybody! And when she wants
coddling--she'll--she'll have a nurse in to do it for her--properly!
She--shut K.K. in the boot closet!  She made Sarah clear it out first.
Can't you hear her howling?  Oh, Nell, why did I go and forget all about
her shoes?  I meant to take them to her directly she came in--all nice
and warm--"

"She might be warm, but she wouldn't be nice, Mol."

"Don't be silly!  You know what I meant.  Of course, it's all very funny
to you--"

"My dear Molly, you must confess it is rather funny!"

Molly began to shake with laughter.  "Oh, Nell, and K.K. looked so
beautifully meek and innocent and the linings only little bits of
leather left sticking out--and they're _such_ big, flat shoes!  And
K.K.'s toe-scratches all over them.  Oh, and Nell--"  Molly couldn't go
on for a while--"while she--was talking--so awfully majestic and
angry--oh, _Nell_!--K.K. seized a shoe out of her hand and fled with it,
shaking it--you know how she does! Oh, I'm glad you weren't there!"

After a while Nell went upstairs.  She listened outside the boot closet;
all was still.  A good deal surprised, she went into her room.  Sheila
Pat, in her petticoat, sat huddled up on a chair, scissors in hand,
bending over the frock she had just taken off.

"What are you doing, Atom?"

She lifted a worried face.

"I'm just lengthing it," she said curtly.

"Oh, Kate Kearney, how did you get out of the boot cupboard?"

"I let her out," calmly.  "I tried all the keys on the doors, and,"
triumphantly, "Sarah's fitted it!"

"Sheila Pat, I'm ashamed of you.  My dear child, you're not unpicking
the stitches at all--you're merely cutting little snips in the stuff.
And, anyway, you're not to do it."

"I like this dress, but it's rikkleously short.  I don't think it's
_perlite_ to wear them so short, Nell."

"Well, you'll have to be impolite then.  Come along into the Stronghold,
sweetheart.  You're frozen."

"I did want to wear it to go and see that boy!  Nell, wouldn't _you_
just let down the hem?"

"No, Atom, I won't.  I hate long frocks for short atoms."

Presently, uneasily, "Do you hate me for being so hard, Sheila Pat?"

"The O'Briens," excessively grown-upedly, "don't hate each other so
easily, Nell."

When the Atom came back after tea she was very quiet. Nell wondered if
she were tired; she answered all questions as to her afternoon's
enjoyment in her soft little voice that gave her curt sentences such a
quaintness, but she originated no remark of her own.  An hour after she
had gone to bed Nell went into her room and peeped at her. She lay
wide-eyed, thoughtful.  A little after that she appeared suddenly in her
night-gown at the door of the Stronghold.

"Hulloa, Atom!"  Denis seized her and swung her up; her arms went round
his neck.

"Denis," the strenuous little voice sounded as if it were near breaking,
"I must go next door, please."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"But you're in your nightie, old girl!  What do you want to go for?"

"It's a private reason."  Her arms clung tighter; she pressed her cheek
against his.  Nell met the great eyes looking over his shoulder, and
went up to her gently.

"Can't you wait till to-morrow, Atom?"

"Why, you'll have to," put in Molly.  "If it's Stewart you want, he'll
be in bed."

"I must go now, Denis; please take me now."

"We can wrap her up," said soft-hearted Denis.

The arms round his neck gave a little spasmodic squeeze.

"Thank y-you," said the Atom.

Laughing, he wrapped her in a great coat of his and a blanket, and
carried her down the steps and in next door.

Mrs. Barclay was a good deal surprised to see them. Denis put the Atom
down, and she stood shivering, her small white face peering with a queer
intensity from out the blanket.

"Stewart, my dear?  Well, I am afraid he is in bed--"

"Please may I go up to him?"

"Very well; come along."

"Please may I go by my _alone_?"

"Oh!  Yes, dear, if you like."

"Thank you."

She turned and went up the stairs to the room Stewart had shown her that
afternoon.  She knocked politely at the door, then went in.  The gas was
burning dimly.

"You?  Is it a fire next door?"  He sat up in bed with joyful
anticipation on his face.

"No.  I--I want to speak to you."

"Is the Pearl ill?"

"No."  She climbed on to his bed and sat silent.

"Hurry up!"

"I--you see, I think I have been very unjust.  I am sorry.  I--when you
said you would rather learn your Catchykism than play cricket, was it
because of your leg?"

"Oh, don't bother!  I want to go to sleep!"

"Please tell me!" the tone was not pleading, but authoritative.

"Yes, then!"

"I--I'm very sorry," quavered Sheila Pat.  "I'm not mostly so nasty,"
she added extenuatingly.  "I didn't think of that."

Stewart was hugging his knees up under his chin.

"You see, I kept thinking you must be a goody-goo because of that."

"You see," he said haltingly, "I--can't run quickly--or field--"

"No."

There was a pause.

"Do you think," came the quavering little voice, "you will ever be able
to like me?"

"Rather!"

"Do you like me now?"

"Course!"

"You may kiss me just once--round by that ear--if you like," said Sheila
Pat.

"I'll kiss you twice if I like!" giving her two hearty smacks.

"Oh!" said Sheila Pat.  Suddenly she perked up. "I shall call you
Tommy," she said.  "Stewart is like a book."

"All right."

"You see," her tone was rather uncomfortable, "I did mean--I had quite
dessided--you see, I thought I had been very nasty, and I thought you
would be very cross, and I did mean to give you--my Pearl--for a whole
week--but I don't want to now."

"I wouldn't take her.  Peter'd be awful jealous, you bet!"

"So he would," joyfully.  "Oh, Tommy, do let's have a pillow fight!"

So it was that the listeners downstairs, with the memory of the small
tragic figure that had left them still vividly in their minds, were
startled by a sudden uproar of cries and bumps and laughter.  Denis, up
the stairs in a moment, and joining in the fray in another moment, found
a wild Sheila Pat, shining-eyed, squealing with excitement, pelting
Stewart with a pillow.  He was not surprised, but Mrs. Barclay felt
somewhat bewildered.




                              *CHAPTER IX*


Sheila Pat came thoughtfully into the room.  "Nell," she observed, "we
give Sarah a lot of extra work."

Nell looked up with an absent eye.  She was trying to calculate how much
they would be able to spend on toys for their Dublin hospital this year.
They were determined not to omit their contribution to the annual
Christmas tree and festivities.

"We make our own beds," said Molly, virtuously.

"But she has to clean out this room to-day; it's cleanin' day.  And
she's goin' home this evenin' to see her mother, and she walks all the
way there and back with her young man.  You see, if she didn't, she'd
never be walkin' out with him at all.  And she tidies up at home,
because her mother's mostly ailin', and she bathes every one of her
brothers and sisters.  There now, Nell O'Brien!"

Nell flung aside paper and pencil.

"Come on, Atom, we'll turn this room out ourselves!"

"I'll go and tell Sarah."  The Atom trotted contentedly from the room.
"Aunt Kezia's out!" she called back.

"How on earth do you begin?" asked Molly, looking helplessly around.

"Oh, you put everything out in the passage first of all," said Nell,
confidently, "then you tie your head up in a duster or something,
because of the dust, you know, and then you begin to sweep and fill the
room with dust.  Oh, and the big things you cover over with dusting
sheets.  I'll get all the things we'll want from Sarah.  You go and tie
up your head."

"Oh, miss!" Sarah was in a state of horror bordering on lunacy.  "You
young ladies to do my work!"

But Nell got her way in the end.

The Atom helped in a silence that was ecstatic.  She pinned up her
pig-tail, and tied a clean duster round her head.  Molly followed suit,
and then the supply being exhausted, Nell twisted a pale blue silk scarf
round hers, and they set to work.  They brushed and brushed; silence
reigned in the Stronghold.  Sheila Pat broke it to observe in a rather
breathless but deeply content voice, "We're gettin' a fine dust now!"

Denis came in with a rush.  "Hulloa!  I say, old man," he called over
his shoulder, "rather a choking atmosphere!"

Nell's greeting froze on her lips.  Her laughing glance met a pair of
well-remembered grey eyes looking straight at her over Denis's shoulder.
She stood quite still; the hot colour dyed her face red.

"I'll go--really, O'Brien, I'd rather--another time!"

The uncomfortable murmur reached her ear; she forgot all about her
unfortunate visit--all about her sense of antagonism.  She went swiftly
forward, hand outstretched, smiling charmingly.

"Please don't go!  Really, we've almost finished.  The dust is dying
down already."

"After manoeuvring the barricade outside successfully you've got to
stay, old man," Denis declared.  "Tell us what you're doing, anyway,
Nell."

But Nell was interested to see the ruefulness in her visitor's face
change suddenly to keen amusement.  She followed his look to the head of
Sheila Pat, which, adorned dusterwise, was crowned with her pig-tail
sticking straight up on top out of the duster.  She gave a little laugh,
and he laughed too.  She turned to Denis and explained why they were
cleaning out the room.  Then Ted Lancaster astonished them all.

"I say," he burst out eagerly, "I wish you'd let me stay and lend a
hand!"

Sheila Pat, squatting on her heels in the middle of the floor, with a
short brush, looked up at him approvingly.

"Come along in and shut the door, there's a good boy!"

The good boy's eyes twinkled as he obeyed.  He removed his extremely
smart coat and professed his readiness to begin.

"By the way," observed Denis, the corners of his mouth twitching
humorously, "I'd better introduce him first!"

"Oh--yes," said Nell, blushing suddenly.

Ted Lancaster bowed gravely to her and with almost deeper gravity to
Sheila Pat.

"That's another sister over there in the cupboard," Denis remarked.
"Molly's fond of cupboards."

The two boys set to work and raised a fearful dust.  Nell observed
ruefully that the parts they were sweeping had been gone over once
already.

Ted looked up earnestly, his brush pausing:--

"You must let us do it--O'Brien and me--every week, Miss O'Brien; our
arms are stronger."

"I," said the Atom, weightily, "think you are a very nice boy."

"And I think you are a very nice lit--young lady."

"I'll show you my snowy-breasted Pearl afterwards."

"Eh?  Oh, thanks."

"He's very sensertive; you mustn't mind if he bites you a little."

"Oh, I'll like it.  So your white-breasted Pearl's a boy, is he?"

"I'll essplain to you about his name another time," she said with great
dignity.  She came closer, and whispered: "Denis calls him somethin'
else.  I'm 'fraid he might do it now.  Promise you'll never, _never_ ask
him what he calls my Pearl!"

He looked surprised into the beseeching face.

"All right," he said gently, "I'll never ask him."

"Thank you."

She dusted a table leg in silence.

"You are English, aren't you?" she said then.

He nodded.

"Perhaps you've lived years and years in Ireland?"

"No."

"Perhaps you've lived a little while there?"

He was looking amused.

"No."

"Perhaps you've stayed for _heaps_ of visits there?"

"No."

"Perhaps you've stayed for just a _few little_ visits?"

"No."

Sheila Pat stared in disappointed wonder.

"Haven't you ever been there at _all_?"

"Never set foot in it."

"Oh!"

Presently, "Well, you're not at all bad--_for England_."

"England," quoth he, gravely, "is the finest country in the world!"

The Atom's eyes and mouth opened incredulously; a swift rush of delicate
pink dyed her face.

"You--you're forgettin' Ireland!" she gasped.

"Not at all.  I believe Ireland's a very decent little place."

"Decent, is it?"--the Atom forgot her dusting--"I'm just s'prised a big
boy like you should be such a--a _hignoramous_!"

She waited proudly, then pursued, her voice trembling with earnestness:
"You're all the same--you English! You're jealous of us!  You--oh,
you're all stupid donkeys!"

It was a downfall from eloquence to rude vituperation. But she was, for
the moment, beyond realisation of that. She stood waiting, her eyes
shining.  But interruption, in the form of Miss Kezia, broke in on Ted's
answer, and the discussion had to be postponed for the present.  Miss
Kezia was somewhat amused, in a dry sort of way, at their room-cleaning.
She shrugged her shoulders over it; if they liked to amuse themselves
that way, it did no harm, and work never yet hurt anyone.  She asked Ted
to stay to luncheon, and he accepted.  He seemed to enjoy the roast beef
and jam roly pudding.  He talked courteously to Miss Kezia, he
skirmished with the Atom, but he avoided Nell's eyes.

Nell seemed absent-minded, sunk in thought.  After luncheon in the hall
she seized an opportunity and approached him.

"I--I want to beg your pardon," she said stiffly, "for--for that
night--"

"Oh--ah--awfully good of you--_good-bye_!  I say, O'Brien, you'll be
late at the bank--I mean," glancing swiftly at her and away again, "not
at all--of course--"  He was out of the hall door, hustling in front of
Denis, down the steps, and into the street.

"You're in a hurry, aren't you?" observed Denis, mildly surprised.

"Er--yes."  He turned his red face away, and strode on.

Nell went up to the Stronghold, smiling unwillingly. She felt as if she
had known him for years, and she resented the feeling.  She told herself
that it was most annoying--his having come in just that morning when
they were cleaning out the room; it was most unfortunate, for how could
anyone be politely distant and dignified under such circumstances?  And
of course sweeping and laughing and having jokes _made_ you feel as if
you had known a person for quite a long while--even an objectionable
person like this Ted Lancaster, who spent his time lounging about and
doing nothing except visit his tailor.  She was quite sure he visited
his tailor a great deal.  And he preferred a motor-car to horses!  By
the time she reached the Stronghold she was frowning.

"Sheila Pat, come and write your dictation."

"Nell," the Atom observed as she sat her down, "I'm very sorry for that
poor boy."

"Why?"

"He's _never been in Ireland_, Nell!"

"Well, so haven't lots of other people."

"I don't mind about them, but I like that boy, and all these wicked men
in Parlymint have--_diseased_ his mind about Ireland!  I have forgave
all the nasty things he said because I'm so sorry for him, poor boy.
And you see," patronisingly, "he doesn't know anythin' about it."

"He's not a bit good-looking," observed Molly irrelevantly; "he's got
rather a big nose."

"Molly O'Brien, you're none so beautiful yourself that you need be rude
about other persons' noses," severely. "That boy's the best I've seen in
this London yet!"

"What queer taste you have, Sheila Pat!" said Nell, with a curl of her
lip.

The Atom did not heed her.  She was sunk deep in thought.

"I like him," she remarked after a while thoughtfully. "Sure I wouldn't
mind him about--when it's mistletoe time!"




                              *CHAPTER X*


Miss Kezia put her latch-key into the lock in a serene frame of mind.
She had spent a morning in giving advice. In any case that was a way
congenial to her of spending her time.  Moreover, on this occasion her
advice had been taken; all the bare, unsweetened pills concocted of her
wisdom had been swallowed unmurmuringly.  Miss Kezia smiled decorously
as she stood on her doorstep.  Then she opened the door, and was greeted
with an emphatic: "Git out, you old meddlar!  D'you hear?  Git out!"

The shock to her was considerable; it was the more considerable that it
came on top of her advice-given-and-taken morning.

She paused, her hand on the latch of the door.  She had a confused
impression that her Irish relatives were showing her a new side of their
character; the voice had come from the Stronghold.  Hitherto, however
noisy, however tiresome, they had not been rude.  Indeed, their soft
manners had oftentimes riled her, she being unable, in her rough
austerity, to disconnect the softness altogether from insincerity.

She was not an imaginative woman; her mind was not formed even to
comprehend, or make allowance for, the quality of imagination in
another.  But as her bonnet slowly rose from her head, she felt suddenly
as if she had been precipitated into an evil dream.  For a moment the
solid aspect of everyday life, in which she moved and had her being,
lost its common-sense reality.  She merely stood, feeling her bonnet
rise.  Then, with a sudden angry gesture, she put up her hand to her
head.  It encountered another hand, a little, soft, cold hand; gentle
little flabby fingers clung round hers, and even Miss Kezia's strong
nerves received a severe jar.  She had no belief in ghosts, in spirits,
or any of "that sort of rubbish," under which designation she lumped
many occult subjects together, but a little gentle hand in mid-air,
clasping hers, was somewhat disconcerting even to her well-balanced
mind.  She glanced up hurriedly, feeling suddenly very hot.  She saw
nothing. She gazed, with a sort of angry anxiety, round the little hall.
The two chairs stood there as usual; the hat-stand looked no different.
Mechanically she counted, seizing unconsciously and with relief on the
everyday hats and coats.  There was Herr Schmidt's bowler and Denis's
cap and coat.  Her eye was arrested suddenly; from out the coat a little
wizened face looked down at her, inimitably wise, inimitably sad.  Miss
Kezia took a step towards it; a long lean arm came softly out in the
direction of her bonnet.  She drew back and went towards the stairs.

"Hulloa!" shouted a voice.  "By Jove, ain't she a disy!  Oh, Lor'!"  The
voice broke suddenly into shrieks of laughter.  It was such intensely
rude laughter that Miss Kezia reddened hotly, and almost shrank, for a
moment, from it.  The plaintive, long-drawn miaow of a cat rose above
the laughter.  Howls--sudden, frenzied wails of woe rose above both.
Miss Kezia went upstairs and entered the Stronghold.

As she opened the door something darted past her. There was a wild
shouting: "Shut the door!  He's gone! Look out, she'll be off, too!"
Miss Kezia felt herself being pushed unceremoniously to one side; there
was a bang of the door, and she found herself alone in the Stronghold.
She drew her hand across her forehead.

"Oh, Lor', here's the disy!"

Miss Kezia positively jumped; she jumped quite badly. She found herself
staring into a grey old face, into a pair of eyes that seemed to have
looked into all the wickedness of the world.  She was not alone in the
Stronghold.  A grey parrot sat on the back of a chair and returned her
gaze with an insolent _sang froid_.

"Get out!" he adjured her.  "You're a disy, you are!"

The dissipated wrinkles round his old eyes added to his _blase_ air of
knowing all things.

"Old meddlar!" he screamed at her in sudden anger. "Old
meddlar,--meddlar-meddlar-meddlar," and he sank into sudden heavy
silence.  He was a particularly ugly specimen of his kind; he was scarce
of feathers, on his poll there was a nasty wound, and one leg had very
obviously at some time been broken and very badly reset. His
self-admiration, nevertheless, was so absurdly apparent that it raised
an intense irritation in Miss Kezia's mind. His air of superiority was
aggressive; his little beady eye told her she was dirt.  They stared at
each other.  Then Miss Kezia's attention was drawn suddenly to a box on
the table.  Under the circumstances she was not really much surprised to
observe that its lid was slowly rising. Across her mind there flitted,
with a vague discomfort, the memory of Irish superstition, of the Irish
belief in fairies and "such rubbish."  She gave herself an angry shake
and approached the box.  As she did so a small brown head appeared in
the aperture, a small brown body followed it, and a thin little mouse
scudded across the table and disappeared.  Miss Kezia waged a deadly war
with mice; the faintest suggestion of a nibble anywhere in the house
resulted in traps--a whole army of traps--up and down stairs.  But now
she stood and watched mouse after mouse push up the box lid, alight on
the table with a little thud, and disappear.  She counted six
mechanically, and then she awoke to full realisation of the enormity of
what was happening.  She approached the box, and with a firm hand pushed
down the lid and put a heavy book upon it. Of the fact that the box was
empty she remained in ignorance.  Then she opened the door and went out
on to the landing.  She looked down into the hall, and beheld the
decorous Sarah, capless, wispy, her apron torn, standing upon one of the
staid hall chairs and screaming.  Perhaps that gave Miss Kezia as severe
a shock as any she had yet received.  But it also acted as a swift and
very emphatic brain-clearer.  No douche of cold water was ever more
effective in its action.

"Sarah!"

Now Sarah had not been aware of the fact that her mistress was within
the house.  The knowledge, sudden and grim, found her quite unprepared,
and coming, as it did, a climax on top of mice, monkeys, cats, dogs,
parrots, tortoises, was too much for her equilibrium.  Sarah fell with a
clatter and a scream, and took the staid hall chair with her.  She also
took two umbrellas and a puppy.  The puppy burst into howls and Sarah
burst into tears.  Each made a considerable noise, and a mouse fled
appalled into Herr Schmidt's bowler.  Some of the O'Briens appeared from
the kitchen (Molly had apparently been embracing the coal box).

"Here's the puppy!"

The joy in Sheila Pat's shout was the finishing touch to Miss Kezia's
wrath.  It fairly blazed forth; she excelled herself.  Her audience
consisted chiefly of Sarah, still weeping; Molly, also weeping; and the
wise-faced monkey, who sat in Denis's coat collar and listened with sad
attention.  For the rest Denis and Nell and the Atom appeared and
disappeared at intervals in pursuit of the puppy, the cat, and the mice.
Miss Kezia's peroration was eloquent; wrath lent it fire.  But her
eloquence began to fail at last, and then she demanded an explanation.
Unfortunately, only Molly and Sarah were present at that point.  Molly
essayed an explanation, but evolved only the following:--

"We--we didn't mean--it--we didn't.  They--they--oh--poor little
things--all cramped up--the--the cages were smaller--than
themselves--we--we--we--"

Then Miss Kezia said something that was not at all like her usual method
of speech.  In a voice thin and rasped with irritation and much
eloquence, she observed:--

"Apparently you think you are a pig!  Eileen!  Eileen! I _command_ you
to come here!"

Nell, a struggling puppy in her arms, stopped short. She was breathless,
untidy, and hilarious.

"We've got them all now, except three of the mice," she added.

The jet ornament in Miss Kezia's bonnet quivered spasmodically.

"Perhaps you will condescend to explain now how it happens that you have
turned my house into a menagerie," she said.

Nell sat down on the lowest stair and kissed the puppy's ugly little
head.

"We are going to send them all to Kilbrannan, Aunt Kezia.  Duckie, stay
still then!  You see--"

"You cannot send the missing mice away!  They will overrun my house."

"They'll have plenty of room, anyway!  If you had seen the cages, Aunt
Kezia!  This blessed puppy--"

"Was in a cage smaller than himself!  I have heard that already."  There
was sarcasm in her tone that was completely lost on Nell.

"Yes!  Just imagine!  Oh, we just had to buy them all.  And that poor
parrot was eating out of an empty pan!  It was cruel!  We just went in
and bought them all."

"Bought--them--all!"  Miss Kezia echoed her words quite faintly.

"You _paid_ for these--these creatures!"

"Why, yes!  It was a horrid little shop, half full of papers and
magazines, half full of tobacco and pipes, and half full of these poor
dears.  Of course it was a good deal of money, but what were we to do?
It was Jim who cost the most--oh, Denis, have you got the rest of the
mice?"

"This beast of a midnight caroller has scratched a hunk of flesh out of
my hand, and all because I saved a mouse from her cattish jaws!"

He was holding a thin and mangy tabby cat at arm's length.

"Why didn't you let her catch it?  It is perfectly ridiculous to be so
childish at your age!"  Poor Miss Kezia could not find words to express
her utter disapproval and want of understanding.

"Well," observed Denis, "'twould be playing it pretty low to buy
half-a-dozen tame mice and give 'em to the cat.  I expect, if their
opinion were asked, you'd find they preferred even the old Jew's cage to
the cat's interior."

Miss Kezia gave some final directions; there was a subdued fury in eye
and voice due as much to her inadequacy to the occasion as to her anger
at the havoc wrought in her well-ordered house.  The monkey coughed
softly, and Sarah, still weeping in the background, screamed.  Sheila
Pat appeared, climbed on to a chair, and lifted the monkey down.  The
monkey put a thin arm round her neck in a horribly human way.  Sheila
Pat kissed his face, and Miss Kezia called out in irrepressible horror.

"I love him," the Atom said calmly.  "He's just 'zact like my dearrest
Patsy O'Driscoll."

The monkey's bright little eyes blinked knowingly.

"I believe he's a first cousin," Denis declared.  "Ever been to
Kilbrannan, old man?  Played hand-ball on summer evenings on Patsy's
wall, eh?  Driven Kate in the jaunting-car?  D'you know the road
up-along by Dinny O'Sullivan's? Sure ye'll be meetin' the doctor's house
to the west--ah, yes, thin, ye're knowin' that all right.  Look at him
smiling, Nell!"

Miss Kezia turned a stiff back upon them and walked into her bedroom.

"She doesn't appreciate you, Jim."

Jim coughed delicately.  It was a funny little soft deprecating cough.

"He is just like Patsy," Nell said.  "If we were to dress him up and put
him on the box seat of the jaunting-car, he'd be acknowledged by his own
mother!"

Miss Kezia's bedroom door was opened.

"You will please to send off all those creatures to-day--and at once!"

It was several hours before her mandate was obeyed. The packing took a
considerable time.  During those hours the monkey crept more and more
into their affections.

"I think," opined Nell, "it's positively wicked to send him on a long,
cold journey with a nasty little cough like that!"

"I shall feel as if I'm murdering one of my own relations," Denis
agreed.

Sheila Pat put a protecting arm round the monkey.

"Jimmy O'Driscoll," Denis said suddenly, "you have an artful
countenance.  Could you make yourself scarce whenever our respected aunt
appeared on the scene? James, could you remember to remember that you're
actually and bodily in Kilbrannan?"

"Oh, Denis!" Sheila Pat broke in ecstatically.  "Oh, I do love Patsy's
cousin!"

That night Miss Kezia said, "I am thankful that your _pets_ have left my
house, and I beg that you will not spend your money in that ridiculous
and wicked way again!"  There was a sarcastic inflexion on the word
"pets."




                              *CHAPTER XI*


Denis stood upon a chair and declaimed.  His audience consisted of
Sheila Pat and Jim O'Driscoll.

"'Literature of the Elizabethan Period.'  Pause, Sheila Pat, with an
inward gaze.  By the way, how d'you gaze at your innards?  Then you
fling back your hair," he tried ridiculously to fling back his short
locks. "Meant to let them grow long for the happy occasion. Then you
begin: 'The Elizabethan Period was one of grand, of glorious prolificacy
in the realms of literature. What names the mere mention of the period
conjures up, names that still ring, and will always ring'--ha! ha! ha!"

He doubled up with sudden laughter.  Jim, squatting in a chair, eyed him
with the same grave attention that he had given to the opening of the
speech.  He was an earnest, if not a particularly appreciative,
audience.

Sheila Pat demanded, "What are you laughin' at?"

"I saw old Lancaster's face suddenly.  He's dangerous. His scowl's
enough to turn the sunshine into a black frost. But he won't back out
now.  He's too jolly obstinate.  You should have seen his face when
Yovil told us his sister had persuaded him to make the evening a bigger
affair and invite ladies too.  And his 'naughty little cuss words,'
Atom! What d'you think he said about your sex too?  He said: 'What
meddlers women are!  Why must they have their fingers in everyone's
pie?'  Why, James there would be more gallant!"

Sheila Pat did not respond to his nonsense.  She said sombrely, "I'm
comin' to hear you speak, Denis O'Brien."

"Sorry, old girl, but the invitation's only for Nell, you know."

She shut her mouth obstinately.

Denis approached Jim.

"Jim, what have you got in your mouth?"

The monkey, in a flutter of fear, opened his mouth and shot out a piece
of india rubber, a small tube of paint, a button off the chair, and a
thimble.  He had a habit of putting things in his mouth and carrying
them about with him.  Denis had taught him already to give them up.  As
the thimble rolled on to the chair, Jim sprang away, up the curtains,
and sat glowering down from the curtain rod.

"He asked Aunt Kezia to come," Sheila Pat said.

"But when he heard that--ahem--unfortunately she was engaged for that
evening, he said he hoped I'd bring my sister myself,--only mentioned
one sister, you see. Fact is, he's full up--afraid his drawing-room
won't hold them all."

The Atom stared out of the window.  Jim, having, with a good deal of
ingenuity, extricated a curtain hook, dropped it on her head.  She shook
it off impatiently.  Jim watched, peering impishly over the curtain
rail.

"I'm awfully sorry, asthore,"--Denis pulled her pig-tail
lovingly--"shall I put you in my pocket?"

"I will hear you speak," the Atom said.

"Well, I'll recite my speech to you and Jim here.  Nell was saying she
wishes you'd take her place."

"Don't be silly, Denis."

A measured step approached the door.

"Aunt Kezia--and Jim not in his cage!" he ejaculated, and strode to the
door.

He glanced back at Jim--a dim little outline in the curtain.  "If only
he stays there!"

He swung out on to the landing, nearly upsetting Miss Kezia.

"I wish to see Molly," she said.

"Molly?  She's not in there, Aunt Kezia."

"One of my boots is missing.  I conclude that Molly, for some purpose of
her own, has taken it."  She moved towards him and the door.

"Don't you trouble," he besought her; "you go and finish getting ready.
I'll find Molly and ask her."

"I prefer to look for myself."

She entered the Stronghold and gazed around.

Jim peered inquisitively at her over the curtain top. Denis frowned at
him and shook his head.

"There is my boot!"  Miss Kezia dragged a large and solid boot from
beneath a chair.  "Well!" she ejaculated, and the amount of indignation
she managed to compress into that one word was terrific.  She held up
the boot--there was not a button left on it.  But on the floor, ranged
in a neat little line, sat ten black buttons.  The absolute regularity
of the line, the precision and neatness, somehow seemed to aggravate the
offence.

"I--I would like to _whip_ Molly!"

Miss Kezia's accents were not so judicial as usual; there was a hurried,
almost a pathetic, note about them.  She was at a loss.  "I will find
Molly," she said with dire meaning, and stalked towards the door.

"I'll find her for you!" Denis exclaimed, and brushed past her.  When
the door was shut, Sheila Pat, with a smile for what had occurred, went
back to the window and her thoughts.

Jim crept stealthily down the curtain and across to the boot buttons,
which had been scattered by Miss Kezia's angry toe.  He picked them up,
one by one, and laid them in a neat little row again.  Then he sat and
regarded them with his head on one side.

Sheila Pat's solitude was invaded presently by a very injured and
tearful Molly.

"She thinks I'm mad!  And he isn't worth it!  I'm to--to sew them all on
myself!  I can't!"

Sheila Pat rose suddenly and left the room.  She went into her bedroom..
It was a bright, cold day with a brilliant sun sparkling on a
fast-disappearing frost.  But Sheila Pat donned a dark blue raincoat.
She looked down with satisfaction on the neat little ankles and feet
that were all that emerged from that end.  From the other end, above an
intensely sporting turned-up collar, her small face looked out with a
weighty seriousness.  She put on a dark blue peaked sort of cap, also
rain proof, slipped downstairs, and left the house.  With her hands in
big pockets, she walked staidly down the road, a quaint little
exceedingly tailorish figure.  She stopped to accost a grey cob in a
milkman's cart, and on the milkman's appearing from a house fell into
conversation with him.  Suddenly she broke out, appealingly young and
eager in spite of her coat:--

"Might I--oh, _please_ might I get in and hold the reins while you're in
the houses?"

He appeared to hesitate.

"It--" a little choke jostled the words--"it's weeks and weeks since
I've held the reins!"

The milkman glanced dubiously down at the very small Atom, then at his
quiet old cob, and assented.  As he politely helped her in he felt the
little tremor that shook her, but he did not understand it.  He smiled
surprisedly at the workmanlike way in which she gathered up the reins.
He nodded kindly into the suddenly joyous face uplifted to his. Sheila
Pat let out a great big breath and clucked softly to the cob.

"Plenty of work in him yet," she observed conversationally. "Pretty
shrewd, too," with a proud little laugh as the cob stopped outside a
house.

"He knows the houses I supply as well as I do, miss."

On his rejoining her, "Any special fad?" she asked.

"Well, he's steady-going as a rule, miss,--don't mind motors, or trains,
or stone-crushers a bit,--but it's a funny thing he can't stand
wheelbarrers!  Shies at 'em quite skittish."

Sheila Pat listened with absorbed interest.  The milkman came to the
last house on his list, and she drove him in style to the dairy.  The
conversation on the way was strictly horsey.  As they drew up she
mentioned where she was going.

"Mr. Yovil?  Oh, we supply him.  I'll take you there, miss; it's close
by."

So it came about that Mr. Mark Yovil, looking forth from his study
window, beheld his milkman driven to his gate by a very small and very
dignified driver, who, after bidding the cob a lingering and loving
farewell, shook hands with the milkman, and entered Mr. Yovil's gate.

A few minutes later a rigidly grave maid announced: "Miss Sheila
Patricia Kathleen O'Brien," and the Atom walked in.

"How-do-you-do?  I am the sister of Denis O'Brien."

Mr. Yovil took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief,
then he fixed them on the brown and bumpy bridge of his nose, and
regarded her through them.

"I'm sure I'm very pleased to see you," he said in a particularly
charming voice.  Sheila Pat would never have dreamt how exceedingly curt
and cutting that voice could be.  "Pray sit down."

"Thank you."

There was a pause, while he watched her pulling down her long coat over
her ankles.

"You see, I've come on business," she said presently, looking up
straight into his face.

"Oh, indeed.  I'm afraid," with a comical shake of his bristly head,
"I'm not much good on business matters."

"It's not about money at all.  I--" there was just a tiny pause--"I want
to know if you--if you would engage me as an extra hand on next
Wednesday."

"An--extra--hand?"

A little pink signal of distress lest he laugh at her flamed in her
cheek.

"You see," the staid voice grew hurried, "I'm rather small for my age.
I'm not really very young.  I'm quite six and fourteen weeks, and I--I'm
'ceptionally strong.  I could wash the plates and knives and forks,
and--and run errings--and fill the water jugs.  I'd do anythin', and I
wouldn't want any wages.  The only stippleation I'd make is that I might
listen in a corner to Denis's speech."

"It's very kind of you," the dark eyes behind the glasses were twinkling
a good deal, "but I really do not need an--er--extra hand."

There was a pause.  Sheila Pat swallowed twice, quite loudly.

"P'raps," tremulous hope sounded in her voice, "p'raps you'd like me to
show people to their seats?"

"N-no," he said slowly, "I really don't think there's any office I need
filling."

He stared distressed at the woeful face of Sheila Pat.  He polished his
glasses with a queer nervousness, this quick-tempered little man before
whom so many grown-ups had trembled.

"I--" with a trembling burst of desperation, "I could fill the coal
skuttles!"

He came over and, drawing up a chair, sat down beside her.

"Will you tell me why you want to--er--fulfil all these menial offices?"
he asked gently.

She slid off her chair.

"It was to hear Denis, you see.  Good-bye, Mr. Yovil."

"But--why not come with your brother?"

"Nell's comin', and you're full up.  Molly doesn't want to, anyway,
because there'd be so many boys starin'."

"I shall be very much hurt if you don't come, too."

A little flush rose to her cheeks.

"I'm not wishin' to intrude, thank you; I wasn't askin' for _that_!
Only, you see, I thought if I could be an extra hand, that would do."

He took the hand extended to him, and with his other rubbed his brow
wildly.  He realised that nothing would induce his small companion to
come on the Wednesday merely as a visitor.  He stared at her in comical
distress.

"Good-bye," he said absently.

As she reached the door he gave a jubilant shout.

"Could you be my Social Prompter, do you think?"

She turned back.

"Yes," she said.  "What is it?"

He smiled.

"Come and sit down again.  There, that's right.  Oh, I shall want a
Social Prompter that evening!" he gave a quizzical little chuckle.  "Now
listen, my dear.  I'm a rude man.  Oh, yes, I am," as she politely
refuted his statement.  "A good many ladies have told me so.  I never
speak to the people I should speak to, and I speak to those I shouldn't.
Well, there will be a good many ladies present on Wednesday, and I must
speak to them all and I must say just about as many words to one as the
other. Now, my sister was to have been hostess, and she gives me a sign
whom I'm to accost next, and so on.  But her little boy has the measles,
and she won't come up to town. Do you see?"

"Oh, yes!" Sheila Pat's face was intent.  "I'll turn up my nose at the
ladies you've spoken to, and smile at the ones you haven't."

"Well--hardly that.  The ladies whom you turned your nose up at might be
hurt, you know.  Let me see, now.  I think if you come quietly up to me
every now and then, and suggest what group I shall join--  How will that
do?"

"Yes," said Sheila Pat.  She put out her hand and gave his arm an
ecstatic little squeeze.

"I did want to see Denis get the prize."

"But perhaps he won't."

"Oh, yes, he will.  He's Irish, you see.  Good-bye.  I'm very much
'bliged."

"Not at all.  It's I who should say that.  I'm coming out.  We'll start
together."

With infinite tact he invented the need of tobacco, because he knew
there was a tobacconist's near the top of Henley Road.  He never smoked
any but a particular brand that he procured at a particular shop, and
that evening his man was gratified by the present of a tin of tobacco.

He bade the Atom good-bye at the top of her road, and looking after the
sedate little back, he smiled.  Such an immense dignity was there in
that small back view of Sheila Pat that it was difficult to associate
her with the severe scolding to which she knew she was walking.




                             *CHAPTER XII*


"Four half crowns is ten bob.  Sarah, if ever I catch you carrying that
heavy coal-box up to our room again, I'll give you a month's warning and
pack you off without a day's notice!

"Nell," entering the Stronghold, "to-day is Saturday. Old Tellbridge,
gazing at my interesting countenance, pale from overwork and perhaps
tired of my unfortunate method of making two and two tot up to five or
three, let me off early.  The pit of a theatre is peopled nowadays by a
most respectable and worthy--"

"A theatre?  Oh, Denis!  Which?  What?"

"My dears, do not shout.  'Tis vulgar.  You've heard of a play called
'Monsieur Beaucaire.'  Softly--softly. And James, there are
no--er--butterflies in K.K.'s coat, I assure you.  Yes, Atom, we _are_
going!  Yes, we must start _at once_!  Lancaster says it's going very
strong. We'll have to wait outside ages.  As our aunt is not at home, I
would suggest a raid on the kitchen, and then flight."

Nell said demurely:--

"Yesterday Aunt Kezia was holding forth on the vulgarity of any but
grocers' assistants and 'sich-like' waiting in a queue outside a
theatre."

Down in the kitchen a scandalised Sarah looked on while they "foraged."
She held a table-cloth in one hand and two table napkins in the other.
Agitatedly she sought to thrust them upon the O'Briens, while they sat
on the table and ate cold jam-tart, bread and cheese, and apples.
Later, as they hurried out of the gate--Molly, gloveless, working her
arms into her coat--she called after them:--

"You'll be faint with 'unger, missansir!"

On the omnibus Molly discovered that she had brought odd gloves with
her.

As they drew near the theatre they were overcome with a sudden fear that
they would be too late to get seats in the front row and they scrambled
anyhow down the omnibus steps.  Sheila Pat took a flying leap that
brought down upon her shouts from the conductor and from the drivers of
two cabs.  The Atom, safe and sound on the curb, drew herself up with
dignity.

"Really, in this _London_ a person can't do a thing at all, without
being interfered with!"

Then they ran.  When they arrived at the theatre, they found only about
ten people there before them.  Denis assured them they would get
front-row seats, and they exulted.

The long wait did not seem long to them.  But their money flew.  There
was the poor man who tied himself into horrible knots; the newspaper
boy, who had blue eyes, and whom they thought might be Irish.  When he
thanked them for the sixpence, his Cockney accent shattered their hopes.
They gave pennies to the little pink-nosed boy whose sister played the
flageolet, and to an old man who sang.

Then the move began.  A very big man directly behind Sheila Pat looked
down amusedly at that excessively small, but excessively determined
young person.  He recognised the fact that the Atom meant no one to push
in front of her. In the front row Sheila Pat sat her down, and looked
around, quivering with excitement.

Just before the curtain went up Ted Lancaster strolled into the stalls,
and sat down in front of the Atom.  She bent forward and dug eager
little fingers into his shoulder.

"Won't you be speakin' to me at all, then, Mr. Lancaster?"

He turned.

"Why, it's my lit--my Irish friend!  How-do-you-do, Miss O'Brien?"

"Oh, please," said Sheila Pat, "is there anyone _Irish_ in the play?"

"I'm afraid not.  But you'll lose your heart to Monsieur Beaucaire,
though he's only a Frenchman!"

She shook an obstinate head.

"I won't!"

At the end of the first act he turned to her.  A little faint pink
colour dyed her cheeks, her eyes were wide and bright.

"Well?  How about your heart?"

"I--I _haven't_!  I won't!"

"I love him!" said Molly.  "And oh, I _loathe_ that wicked Duke of
Winterset!"

When the curtain went down at the end of the first scene of the second
act, he turned to her again.  Her eyes were brighter, her cheeks pinker
than before.  She refused to look at him.

"It's only two minutes," Ted said.  "Miss Sheila Patricia?" he finished
with an uplifting of brows.

"I--I _haven't_!  You are a very intruding boy!"

The curtain went up, and he turned away.

The moment when she finally and absolutely and openly capitulated was
when Monsieur Beaucaire came down the stairs, taking the old Countess of
Greenbury to supper. In the midst of the storm of applause, one ecstatic
little voice rang out.

"He's _worthy_ to be Irish, anyway!"

As they went out Molly managed to become separated from them and lost.

Denis said, "You stay out here with Lancaster," and plunged back into
the crowd.

Sheila Pat, excited, too restless to stand still, plunged eagerly after
him.

Nell was left standing with Ted.  Now Ted Lancaster was possessed of
some physical attributes that particularly displeased Nell, as being so
ridiculously untrue to his character.  She fell to pondering the
strength of his rather thin mouth and of his chin; on the look of
cleverness about his deep-set eyes.  The very breadth of his shoulders
displeased her.  She told herself that a slack creature such as he must
be, who lounged about and did nothing except drive in a motor, had no
business with a face like his.  Irritatedly she fought against a strong
inclination to like him.

"Isn't your motor waiting for you?" she broke the silence in a bland
tone of voice.

"No."  He sounded a little surprised.  "There're always hansoms, you
know," he added.

"Oh!  But you prefer your motor, don't you?"

He gave her a quick, shrewd glance; there was just the suspicion of a
smile at the corners of his lips as he answered carelessly:--

"Well, they get you along quicker, you know."

"Yes," she said, "and of course when you've a lot to do--when you are
very busy--that's a consideration."

There was a little pause.  She glanced at him and smiled maliciously.
He had flushed a little.

"Yes," he agreed nonchalantly.

She watched three women frantically tearing about in search of a hansom,
but she was thinking of Ted.  What a cool voice he had!  She wasn't sure
that it wasn't impertinent. And as for his looking tired and ill--well,
of course he would, living an unhealthy, self-indulgent, lazy life.
Suddenly she began to contrast his mode of life with Denis's before they
had left Kilbrannan.  Impulsively she spoke her thoughts aloud, keeping,
in actual words, only to Denis, his prowess in the hunting field,
football, and so on; but her expressive voice and face pointed the
moral, drew the contrast, as plainly as if she had spoken it.  There was
another pause when she stopped.

Then Denis appeared with the others.  The relief in her welcome was
unmistakable.

"Got her!  She was rushing off in a frenzy straight for the North Pole!
You're not going, Lancaster?  Rot! Come along with us, old chap, and be
introduced to Jimmy O'Driscoll."

Ted glanced at Nell; it was an odd glance, and his mouth twisted in a
sudden dry smile.

"Yes, won't you?" she said carelessly.

"Thanks, no, I've to meet a fellow!"

He raised his hat and walked away.

Sarah let them in at No. 35.  She looked scared and spoke in a loud
whisper.

"Oh, missansir, there's been murder done as sure as my name's Sarah
Jones!  Hush!  She's in!  The poor little dog!  Its dying 'owls were
pitiful!  I allus knew that unchristian monkey-thing would do us a
'arm!"

She managed to work on their feelings to a certain extent, although they
knew that Jim had conceived a deep affection for Kate Kearney, which
that young person returned with a disdainful and bullying sort of
tolerance.  They hurried up to the Stronghold, Denis produced the key,
and they opened the door.  The room presented a somewhat chaotic
appearance; bits of Denis's slippers strewed the floor; a fur rug
distributed itself in bunches round the room; the table-cloth had been
pulled off, and with it various books, papers, and a bowl of
chrysanthemums.  With the chaos a dead silence greeted them; they could
see neither Kate Kearney nor Jim O'Driscoll.

Molly gasped:--

"Oh--they're both killed!"

Behind the easy chair they sat, two little mute, obstinate figures,
palpably worn out, and each still holding on grimly to a battered thing
of felt and ribbon that once had been a hat of Nell's.  In Jim's thin
little hands, as they gripped the hat, bunches of black fur were
discernible, which told a tale.  At their approach K.K. arose, panting,
and renewed the struggle.  She was very strong and Jim was very small.
With her teeth fixed firmly in the felt, she pulled and pulled, backing
all round the room, and at the other end of the hat came Jim, hopping,
sliding, but never letting his hold slip.  His pathetic little wizened
face added to the ludicrousness of the spectacle.  In the end Denis
bethought him brilliantly of a way to end the struggle with fairness to
both sides.  He took a knife and sawed Nell's hat in halves.
Immediately each went straight for the piece the other held, and as each
dropped its own piece, Nell picked them up, and the battle was perforce
at an end.

Jim fled, chattering with rage, to the top of the curtain, and Kate
Kearney had resort to what no doubt she would have termed a hurt
dignity, but what looked considerably like a fit of the sulks.

"Now," said Denis, "how did that little beggar undo his cage door?"

Nell said, still laughing:--

"It's just struck me that it's rather hard on my hat!"




                             *CHAPTER XIII*


Denis was immersed, fathoms deep, in unutterable gloom. It was the
all-important day, at last.  That morning he had risen in wild spirits.
"Don't believe my poor old essay is so bad after all!  Anyhow, what's it
matter?"

At luncheon time he was still hilarious; at tea time down, down in the
depths.  His thermometer had been very much like that in regard to his
speech, up and down, down and up, for the past week.

"It's tea time, Denis."

"All right."  He glanced up from his notes with his eyebrows up, his
forehead wrinkled.  "T'won't make any difference whether I go on reading
up or not--it's awful rot, anyway."

"It's grand," declared Sheila Pat, and the Pearl chattered his teeth
angrily at the enthusiastic squeeze she gave him.

"Don't lose heart, Denis, it's a fine speech," said Nell.

"It's stiff--stilted," he said, frowning.

She flushed; he had put her own secret fear into words.

"I'm quite sure you will get the prize," remarked Stewart, who had been
invited to tea.  He spoke with deep earnestness; he had an intense
admiration for Denis.

But Denis sat glum and gloomy while they pressed bread and butter on
him, and Stewart made him a slice of French toast.  Then suddenly he
looked up, and he burst out laughing.

"Oh, how you're all waiting on Sir Doldrums Gloomy-grump! Look at the
noble Stewart's flushed countenance, reddened in my unworthy service!
Not another word on literature!  Let's forget that such things as
speeches exist!"

But presently he began to laugh again:--

"I'm thinking of poor old Lancaster.  Saw him this afternoon--talk about
gloom!  He was in a vile temper! 'Pretty lot of fools we'll look!  But I
deserve all I get!' he growled, and off he marched, though I wanted to
speak to him particularly!"

While they were dressing, Stewart slipped away next door.

He reappeared, oddly red and shy.

Sheila Pat, in short white petticoat and stockinged feet, met him on the
landing.

"Where have you been, Tommy?"

"Just home."

"What's the matter, Tommy?"

"Nothing!"

Sheila Pat considered him gravely.

"Your face is very red."

"Rot!"

"And why are you keepin' your hand behind you?"

"Want to!"

She made a dart, but he turned, too.  Round and round they went, and she
won.  She was too quick and elf-like for him.

"Oh!" she said.  "It's a red rose.  Is it for Nell?"

"No!"

"Is it for me?"

"If--if you like--you can have it!"

"Oh, yes, please, Tommy."

He held it out to her, a lovely deep red rose with a spray of maiden
hair.

"I'll pin it in front of my dress, Tommy, and I'll look so nice, won't
I?  Janie and Benny Jones are comin' to look at us when we're dressed."

"Sheila Pat!  Sheila Pat!"

She slipped away from him.

Presently she reappeared in the Stronghold.

"Tommy, _don't_ you think--with my button-hole and all--_I might be
seven_?"

Stewart looked at her in her little loose, short white frock; at her
long, slim legs and little white heelless shoes.

"Don't look at my _legs_!" she breathed.

"Ten!" he said unblinkingly.

"Oh, Tommy!  I do so want to look old to-night!  It's very
erportant--what I've got to do!  And I'll put some cakes in my pocket
for you."

Nell ran past the room and upstairs to see how Denis was getting on.  He
had lost his collar stud.  She found it for him; she put it in for him;
she sewed the bow on to his shoe; she rearranged his tie; helped him on
with his coat, and all he said in thanks was:--

"Oh, Jemima! how I pity the poor chap who marries you!"

Nell pulled her hair a trifle looser, using his glass.  She turned on
him, young, slim, radiantly pretty.  "Do you?" she laughed.  "I'll be an
old maid, then!"

"You do look stunning, old girl!  Bet I'll have the prettiest sister
there to-night."

"Oh, I do believe you carry a chip of the blarney stone about with you.
Come down and let Janie and Benny look at you.  Denis, there's a most
delicious scent in this room.  What is it?"

"Eh?  Oh, a bit of lily of the valley I thought you might like.  It's on
the wash-hand stand."

He whistled a bar of "Widow Macree."

"Oh, Denis!"  She was holding up a lovely bunch of lilies of the valley
to her cheek.

He turned with sudden irritation.

"Don't start about it's being extravagant!  It isn't! If you say a word,
I'll chuck 'em in the dust-bin!"

She smiled demurely.  The flowers had been behind the water-jug, with a
suspicious air of having been hidden there.

"They're lovely," she said, tucking them into her soft folded belt.  "I
must pin them in.  Are you coming, twin?"

"If it weren't for taking you two, I wouldn't come at all."

"Oh, yes, you would."

"What's the good?  I haven't a ghost of a chance--"

"If you _knew_ you were bound to make the worst speech there," her head
was up, "you would go.  We never funk anything, Denis!"

"Neither we do, old lady!"

He seized her round the waist and ran her downstairs to her room.

"Nell," called out the Atom, "aren't you ready?  Janie and Benny have
come!"

"O dear, then hurry I _must_!  Molly, I wish you were coming, too!"

"I don't!  I wouldn't for anything," she whispered eagerly.  "I shall go
and talk to Aunt Kezia!"

"Molly, you're getting too good altogether for the likes of us!  Don't,
in your exaltation, forget to shut Jim up. Benny, what big eyes!  Janie,
how's the cold?  Duckies, ask Sarah if we didn't leave two nice cakes at
tea.  Coming, Denis!  Good-bye, Aunt Kezia.  Molly, there's a packet of
butter-scotch somewhere--find it for them.  Good-bye!"

Mark Yovil greeted the Atom as an old friend.

"Of course," said Sheila Pat, anxiously, "I don't know which ladies
you've spoke to before I came."

"Oh, that doesn't count," he reassured her.

Nell looked round the room interestedly.  There were not many people
there yet.  Standing by a lounge talking to a girl with an elaborately
dressed head of colourless hair, she saw Ted Lancaster.  Another girl,
younger, sat between her and an older, stouter edition of them both,
obviously the mother.  Nell had a quick thought of a hairdresser's shop,
the three heads were so stiffly held, so carefully dressed.  Then she
wondered, humorously, whether the husband and father didn't get tired of
seeing his wife in three stages of age and size.

"Will you come?" Mr. Yovil asked.  "I'd like to introduce you to Mrs.
Lancaster.  She's Ted Lancaster's aunt, you know--he and your brother
are chums, aren't they?"

"Y-yes."

Mrs. Lancaster bent a stiff head, Miss Lancaster and Miss Gertrude
Lancaster did likewise.  Ted shook hands.

"Is your brother going to make a speech?" Gertrude asked as Nell sat
down beside her.

"Yes.  When are they going to start?"

"I don't know.  The whole thing is an awful bore, isn't it?"

"No; I love it."

"Really?  Alicia," turning to her sister, "Miss O'Brien is actually
enjoying herself!"

"Really?  How queer!  We only came because we thought dear Mr. Yovil
would be hurt if we refused."

Up came Denis.

"I say, can't you squeeze me in somehow?"

Gertrude unbent and laughed as he sat down between her and Nell.

Sheila Pat, always earnest, trotted gravely at her host's heels till he
released her.  Even then she watched.  He was standing talking to an
imposing matron when he felt a sharp little nip on his arm.  He looked
down and met Sheila Pat's chiding eyes.

"You've spoken to her _twice_!  I would have thought you'd remember
her--_by her nose_!"

The whisper was loud; he muttered a hasty excuse and fled.  But he fled
in the wrong direction.  After him ran Sheila Pat.

"You haven't spoken _once_ to the lady in the bathing dress!"

In her eagerness her voice rose, and several pairs of eyes glanced
instinctively across the room to where a lady in a red and white striped
silk gown sat amiably looking on, and several people hid smiles.

"Ted isn't a bit nervous," Gertrude Lancaster confided to Nell.  "He's
quite calm and cool.  Now, that poor Cuthbert Pennington who's just been
introduced to you is all on wires about it."

Nell looked across to where Ted lounged, talking to an old gentleman.

"Is he convinced he'll win the prize?"

"Oh, I don't know.  But nothing ever troubles him, I think.  Can you
catch his eye?  I want to ask him about a dinner-party--I _can't_ make
him look this way!"

"Isn't it unkind to disturb him?  He looks so comfortable."

"Oh, no--oh, that's it.  Now he'll come."

He came slowly and stood before them.

"You want me?"

Gertrude chattered about an approaching dinner-party, then she turned to
join in another conversation.

Ted stood silent.

Nell glanced up at him.  "Nothing ever troubles him," rang in her ears.
She frowned impatiently.

"Poor Mr. Pennington!" she said softly.

He glanced across at Pennington, surrounded, the centre of a noisy
group, and raised his eyebrows.

"He's nervous about his speech.  He," there was the faintest accent on
the "he," "doesn't feel sure he will win the Shakespeare."

"How queer!  Surely each one in his heart is convinced he'll pull it
off!"  There was an odd mocking note in his voice.

"Only the conceited ones!" she laughed.

There was a little pause.

She looked up at him, smiling.

"_You_ feel as if you will win it, don't you?" she said amiably.

"Thanks.  I take it, Miss O'Brien."

"The speeches are going to begin," observed Gertrude, turning round.

"I say," Cuthbert Pennington's dark face was trying to look injured,
"they've made me go up first!  Wish me luck!  I'm a-trembling all over.
Shouldn't wonder if I faint away in a swoond!"

His speech was good, bright, and vivacious, and sometimes humorous.
There was a good deal of applause at its finish.

Nell felt terribly excited.  She 

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