Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Sixteen.Viva’s Story.Pixie drove home in state, so puffed up with her own importance that it was a distinct blow to find the curtains comfortably drawn, and hear the echo of laughter from the drawing-room. In all the books which she had ever read, candles were left burning in the windows to guide the footsteps of wanderers from the fold, to say nothing of bellmen parading the streets, and anxious relatives rushing from one police station to another. Here, however, all was peace and contentment, and, incredible as it appeared, no one seemed to have been the least agitated about her prolonged absence.Bridgie was perched on a stool in the centre of the fire rug, relating the history of the day’s shopping to the three brothers, and she nodded cheerily at the little sister as she entered, and saluted her with unconcerned composure.“Well, dear, here you are! Tired after your long day?”Pixie sank down on the corner of the sofa, and yawned with a nonchalant air. If there was one thing which she loved above everything else in the world, it was to make an impression and be the centre of attraction, and it was not likely that she was going to let slip such an opportunity as the present.“’Deed I’m not tired,” she said genially. “Carriage exercise was always more to my fancy than walking about the streets. If we’d been meant to walk, wouldn’t we have had four legs the same as the horses, and if we haven’t, doesn’t it show that they were meant to do it for us? So when he said the butler should get me the carriage, it wasn’t likely I was going to refuse, and up I drove to the very door!”Jack stopped short in the middle of crossing the room, Pat peered round the corner of his chair and twinkled with mischievous enjoyment, Bridgie’s eyes opened as wide as saucers.“Which door? What carriage? What romance are ye telling me? Haven’t you been with Sylvia since I left you?”“’Deed I have not. What made you fancy I had?”“There was nowhere else to go, and you had not come home. I made certain you were with Sylvia!”“It’s a bad thing to be certain about what you don’t know. If any mischief had happened to me, it would be annoying to you to remember how you were laughing with your back to the fire, while I was run over in the street, and having my legs sawed off at the hospital.”Jack frowned at that, and put a quick question.“Have you been walking about by yourself? I won’t have it at this hour of the night. You can find your own way about the neighbourhood in the daytime, but I won’t have you going into town by yourself, or even across the road in the dark. London is not Knock, remember, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to get lost. Don’t let her roam about without you, Bridgie!”“’Twas only a step, and barely four o’clock!” Bridgie’s forehead was fretted with anxious lines, but Pixie nodded back cheery reassurement.“Don’t you repine about me, for I got on famously, and Mrs Wallace is coming herself to see you in the afternoon. I’ve engaged myself as a French lady to amuse the children, and you shall have the money to pay the bills. It was an advertisement in the paper, and you had to call between four and six, so I didn’t want you to know before everything was settled. I don’t know how much it will be, but Mr Wallace said I was worth a fortune, because I made them stop howling. There are only two, but outside the door you would think they were a dozen, and I made them laugh, and they sent me home in a carriage.”“Whatisshe talking about?” Bridgie and Jack exchanged bewildered glances, and stared in incredulous silence at the little figure on the sofa. She had pulled off her hat, and with it the bow of ribbon, and the loosened hair hung down her back; her hands were crossed on her lap, there were dark shadows under her eyes. She looked so small and frail and childlike that Bridgie felt a lump rising in her throat at the thought of help coming from this strange and most unexpected quarter. She rose, and, going over to the sofa, took Pixie’s hand between her own.“Is it the truth that you are telling us?”“It is, then! The solemn truth! Every word of it.”“What made you think there was any need for you to disturb yourself? What put it in your head to answer an advertisement at all?”“Because I didn’t want to be a burden to ye, my dear, after all the money you’ve spent on me education!”“A little midget like you to speak of being a burden! No one would guess you were there if you weren’t so upsetting! It’s no use fifty Mrs Wallaces coming to see me. Some other French lady will have to amuse her children. This one is wanted at home!”Pixie smiled composedly, and squeezed the clinging hands.“I knew you’d say ‘No’ at the start. So did she. She was first cross, and then she laughed, and said it would be a long, long time before I was ready to teach. But she didn’t really want teaching, only someone to be funny in French, and when she heard me telling tales, and the little girls both laughing, she began to think she would love to have me. You remember the stories you used to tell me, Jack, about the Spoopjacks and the Bobityshooties? I made up a new bit, and they simply loved it. It’s two hours every morning, and only ten minutes’ walk, and Thérèse says it’s no use beginning to be proud till you’ve paid your bills. You would like me to help you, wouldn’t you, Jack?”“Shades of Mrs Hilliard!” muttered Jack, and shrugged his shoulders recklessly. “She will have a few volumes to write to me if I say ‘Yes!’ You are bound to help me, Piccaninny, whatever you are about, but I can’t bind myself to allow you to go out governessing before you are out of short frocks. It is Saturday to-morrow, so I shall be home in the afternoon, and see this Mrs Wallace for myself. It’s a bad scheme on the face of it, but it’s just possible it may be more feasible than it sounds.”That was all the length which he would go for the moment, and Pixie was content to drop the subject, secure in her conviction that time and Mrs Wallace would win the victory. She was petted and fussed over to her heart’s content for the rest of the evening, and the story of her various efforts to retrieve the family fortunes was heard with breathless attention. She wondered why the listening faces wore such tender, pitiful expressions, why lazy Pat flushed, and Bridgie went over to her desk and spent a whole half-hour sorting out her bills. It never occurred to her that her earnest effort to take her own share of responsibility was a more eloquent stimulus than twenty lectures!Next afternoon at three o’clock the two sisters and Sylvia Trevor stationed themselves in positions of vantage behind the curtains, and looked out eagerly for the advent of Mrs Wallace. Bridgie could not divest herself of a suspicion that the promise might have been given as the easiest way out of a difficulty, but before the half-hour struck a well-appointed carriage turned the corner of the road, the coachman glanced at the number on the door, and drew up his horses, when a fluffy head peered out of the window, and Pixie cried excitedly—“That’s the thin one! That’s Viva! I expect she howled, and they could not keep her away. That’s Mrs Wallace! Isn’t it an elegant hat?”Bridgie peeped and grew quite pink with excitement, for, truth to tell, mother and daughter made a charming picture as they came up the little path. Mrs Wallace looked almost like a girl herself in her becoming hat and veil, while the golden-haired child wore a white coat and cap edged with fluffy swan’s-down. Sylvia retreated to the dining-room.Pixie ran to meet the visitors at the door, and the voice that exclaimed, “Bon jour, Mamzelle Paddy!” was in itself an augury of friendship. The next moment they were in the drawing-room, and Mrs Wallace was smilingly explaining the title.“I am sure you must have been very much surprised to hear of yesterday’s interview, Miss O’Shaughnessy! ‘mamzelle Paddy,’ as my husband has named your small sister, has made quite a conquest of my little girls, and Viva refused to be left behind when she heard where I was going. I hope you were not very anxious about her absence yesterday?”“Indeed I was not, for I took it for granted she was with some friends near by. Please sit down, and get warm. ’Twas a ridiculous idea of the child’s to suppose for one moment that she could fulfil your requirements; but she’s the baby of the family, and has never been thwarted, and such a kind little creature that she must try to help if there is any difficulty. It is good of you to take the trouble to come and explain, but indeed we have decided already that it is quite, quite impossible!”Mrs Wallace gave a start of consternation, and the smile faded from her lips. She looked first at Bridgie, then across the room to where Viva stood on tiptoe dragging at Pixie’s sleeve, and reiterating, “Mamzelle! Mamzelle Paddy, will you come again to my nursery? Will you tell me more stories about those peoples in the lamp-posts?”“Oh, don’t say it is impossible!” she said softly. “I want her to help me too, and I am so troubled about my children. Could she—could they both go into another room for a few minutes, while we talk it over together?”“Certainly they could!” Bridgie raised her voice a tone higher. “Pixie dear, go to Sylvia in the dining-room and take the little girl with you. Show her some of your treasures!”“I like cake!” remarked Viva pointedly. She skipped to the door, and stared round the hall with curious eyes. “You do live in a poky little house, don’t you? My mamma’s house is much bigger than your house. Where does the dining-room live? Is there a cupboard in it that you keep cake in? Is Sylvia your ’nother sister? Who is the man?”The man was none other than handsome Jack himself, who was enjoying the rare luxury of atête-à-têtewith Sylvia Trevor, and was not too well pleased by this speedy interruption. He frowned when he heard the opening of the door, but when he turned round and saw the vision of pink and white and gold, he smiled in spite of himself, as most people did smile at the sight of Viva Wallace, and held out his hand invitingly.“Hallo, whom have we here?”“Quite well, thank you. How are you?” replied Viva fluently. She paid no attention to Sylvia at the other side of the fireplace, but leant confidingly against Jack’s chair, staring at him with rapt attention. His eyes looked as if they liked you very, very much; his moustache had sharp little ends which stood out stiff and straight, there was a lump in his throat which moved up and down as he spoke—altogether he was a most fascinating person, and quite deserving of attention. “Are you the papa?” she asked enviously. “My papa has got a brown face with lines in it. He is very old. My muzzer is old too. She is talking to the lady in the ’nother room, and she said I was to be amused. You are to amuse me!”“No, no, quite a mistake. You must amuse me!” said Jack solemnly. “I have been out all day, and am tired and sleepy, so you must do something to cheer me up. What can you suggest, now, that would be really lively and entertaining?”Viva reflected deeply.“I’m learning the ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’!”“You don’t say so!”“Yes, I am. I’ll say it to you now, from the beginning right to the very miggle!”“Thanks awfully. I should be delighted—another time. Not to-day, I think, if you don’t mind. I have rather a sore throat.”Viva opened her eyes and stared at the Adam’s apple which showed above the white necktie. She was trying to puzzle out the connection between Mr O’Shaughnessy’s throat and the Pied Piper, but the difficulty was too great. She heaved a sigh, and hazarded another suggestion.“You tellmea story!”“That would never do. I should be entertaining you, and it ought to be the other way about.”“I’ll tell you a story!”“That’s better. Go ahead, then. What is it to be about? Fairies?”“No, it’s not going to be about fairies,—fairies is silly. Giants are more sensibler than fairies, because there was a giant once. There was Golosher!”“I beg your pardon?”“Golosher!”“Don’t know the gentleman.”“Oh, you naughty! And David killed him in the Bible. I’ll tell you a story about giants.”“I don’t think I am interested in giants.”“Princesses, then, beautiful princesses, and cruel people trying to be unkind to them, and princes running away and marrying them, and living happily ever afterwards.”“That’s the style for my money! Fire away, and let us have plenty of adventure. I’ll lean back in this chair and listen to you.”Viva moistened her lips, swallowed rapidly once or twice, and began her story in a shrill, high-pitched voice.“Once upon a long, long time ago, there was a princess, and she was the most beautiful princess that was ever born. Everyone said so, and her face was as white as snow, and her hair as yellow as—”“Excuse me—brown!”“No, it wasn’t brown. Bright, curly, golden, down to her—”“Then she couldn’t have been the most beautiful princess in the world, because I’ve seen the lady and her hair is brown.”Jack stroked his moustache with a look of lamb-like innocence, and Sylvia could have shaken herself with annoyance because she could not help blushing and looking stupid and self-conscious. Pixie’s melodious gurgle sounded from the background, and Viva cried severely—“You couldn’t have seen her, because she lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago, when you were a teeny baby. Golden hair down to her feet, and her teef were like pearls, and all the godfathers and godmuzzers came to the christening and gave her nice presinks, only one wicked old mugian who—”“Pardon me! One wicked old—?”“Mugian! He’s a man what does things. They always have them in stories—that the mamma had forgotten to ask, so he was angry and said she should tumble downstairs when she was grown-up and be lame ever after till a beautiful prince made her better. Oh, but I shouldn’t have told you that jest now. You must pitend that you forget I have told you. So then the beautiful princess—her true name was Mabel, but only I call her Norah because her hair was gold—”Now it was Jack’s turn to gasp and search in vain for the connection between Norah and golden hair! It proved as impossible to discover as that between a sore throat and the Piper of Hamelin, but there was another allusion in the story which was too fortunate to be allowed to pass unnoticed.“The princess was lame, was she? and no one could make her better but the prince? That’s very interesting. Could you tell me, now, how he managed the cure? It might be useful to me someday.”“Was your princess a lame princess?”“I think you had better go on with your story, Viva!” Jack said hurriedly. “Your mother may call you away before it is finished, and I should be disappointed. When did the prince arrive on the scene?”“It doesn’t get to that yet. So the princess lived in a house where there were no stairs. Only one day when she was walking through the wood, there was a little house and she went in, and she said, ‘Oh, what funny things!’ and she went up them, and she tumbled down, and her foot was underneaf, so she was lame. An’ she lay on the sofa, and the queen-mamma cried, and the godfathers and the godmuzzers came flying up, only they could do nothing, and the king said anyone should have the land who made her better, an’ thousands an’ thousands tried, an’ at last the prince came riding along on a white horse, an’ he looked froo the window—”“Jack dear, will you please come to the drawing-room? We want to consult you!” Bridgie’s head peered round the corner of the door, her cheeks quite pink, her eyes shining with excitement. She gripped her brother’s arm as he came to meet her, and whispered, “It’s the most extraordinary thing—she really means it! She is charming, Jack, charming; I can’t say ‘No’ to her. Come and try what you can do!”But Jack was not a good hand at saying “No,” least of all to charming ladies, and Mrs Wallace took his measure at once, and felt that she had gained a friend.“I am trying to persuade Miss O’Shaughnessy to lend your little sister to me for a short time every day, to help me with my children,” she said, smiling at him under lifted brows. “I understand that you knew nothing about her application, and when I first saw her I felt, as you must have done, that the idea was preposterous, but Viva and Inda fell desperately in love with her, and have talked of nothing else since she left. I think I followed their example, and I am quite sure my husband did. He thinks Mamzelle Paddy would be the solution of all our nursery troubles, if you could be induced to spare her to us. I would be very careful of her; I promise you that!”Jack looked at Bridgie; Bridgie looked at Jack.“I’d be delighted that she should help you, and it would be an amusement to her to play with the dear little girls. If she might come as a friend—”“Oh, Miss O’Shaughnessy, how cruel of you, when her great idea was to help you! She would be a most welcome friend, but I could not consent to using her time without paying for it.”Mrs Wallace had approached this question before, and had discovered that Bridgie was no more embarrassed by a reference to her poverty than had been Mamzelle Paddy herself. “We should think any sum cheap which ensured our little girls being happy and occupied, instead of crying and quarrelling, as I am sorry to say they do now for the greater part of the day. They are too young for regular lessons, but they already know French fairly well, and would soon be able to speak fluently.”“I can’t judge of Pixie’s French, but her English is so Irish that it was a stroke of genius to offer herself in the character of a foreigner!” said Jack, stroking his moustache, and smiling to himself in whimsical fashion. “Of course, she is quite confident that she could do all you require, but you must not listen to her own account of herself. If you offered Pixie the command of the Channel Fleet, she’d accept without a qualm! If you want the kindest-hearted, most mischievous little ignoramus in the world, Mrs Wallace, it would be waste of time to search any farther, for you have found her already! She will keep your children happy, and never say a word that they wouldn’t be the better for hearing, but it won’t be the orthodox training! I fancy Pixie was a big surprise to the English boarding-school when she first arrived.”“But she left with the prize for being the most popular and unselfish of the girls! Your sister has just shown me the books with the touching inscription. If she can teach my girlies to be as sweet and helpful, I shall not mind a few eccentricities. Two hours in the morning would not take her away too much from home, and she would have plenty of time left for her own music. Her ambition seemed to be to pay for her own lessons, so if I gave her thirty pounds, she could go to a really good master without feeling that she was overtaxing you. It would be such a pleasure to me too, Miss O’Shaughnessy. I feel sure your brother will agree, if you consent. Please say ‘Yes’!”So it was left to Bridgie to make the final decision, and in after years she used to wonder what would have happened if she had refused her consent! It was a difficult problem, for to her old-fashioned notions it was a trifleinfra digfor a girl to work for herself, and it hurt her tender heart that the Piccaninny of all others should be the one to go out into the world.What would the dear dead mother have said to such a project? What would the Major have said? What would Esmeralda think now, and, thinking, say, with all the impassioned eloquence of which she was mistress? Bridgie reflected earnestly on the questions, while Mrs Wallace watched her face with anxious eyes.The dear mother had never been able to resign herself to the happy-go-lucky Irish customs, and had died before her time, worn-out with the strain of trying to make both ends meet. When she looked down from heaven with those clear angel eyes, would it seem more noble to her that her baby should preserve a puny social distinction at the cost of a purposeless life, or that she should use the talents which had been given to her for her own good and the good of others?There could be little doubt how the mother would have decided, and as for the Major, Bridgie smiled with indulgent tenderness as she pictured, one after the other, the swift stages of his behaviour if he had been present to-day. Horror and indignation at the possibility that the Piccaninny should be in subjection to anyone but himself; irritated impatience that the O’Shaughnessys should be expected to pay for what they desired, like any ordinary, commonplace family; chuckling delight over the smartness of the child; and finally an even greater inability than his sons to say “No” to a charming woman! Storm he never so wildly, the Major would undoubtedly have ended by consenting to Mrs Wallace’s plea, while Esmeralda’s wrath would be kept within bounds by Geoffrey’s strong common sense.Bridgie sighed and looked across the room to where Jack sat.“If it is left to me,” she said slowly, “if I am to decide, I think I will say ‘Yes’! She shall come to you for a month on trial, Mrs Wallace, and we can see how it works.”Mrs Wallace beamed with relief and satisfaction.“That’s very kind!” she said. “I am truly grateful. I realise that your decision is unselfish, but believe me, you shall never regret it!”And Bridgie remembered that prophecy, and smiled over it many times in the happy years to come.

Pixie drove home in state, so puffed up with her own importance that it was a distinct blow to find the curtains comfortably drawn, and hear the echo of laughter from the drawing-room. In all the books which she had ever read, candles were left burning in the windows to guide the footsteps of wanderers from the fold, to say nothing of bellmen parading the streets, and anxious relatives rushing from one police station to another. Here, however, all was peace and contentment, and, incredible as it appeared, no one seemed to have been the least agitated about her prolonged absence.

Bridgie was perched on a stool in the centre of the fire rug, relating the history of the day’s shopping to the three brothers, and she nodded cheerily at the little sister as she entered, and saluted her with unconcerned composure.

“Well, dear, here you are! Tired after your long day?”

Pixie sank down on the corner of the sofa, and yawned with a nonchalant air. If there was one thing which she loved above everything else in the world, it was to make an impression and be the centre of attraction, and it was not likely that she was going to let slip such an opportunity as the present.

“’Deed I’m not tired,” she said genially. “Carriage exercise was always more to my fancy than walking about the streets. If we’d been meant to walk, wouldn’t we have had four legs the same as the horses, and if we haven’t, doesn’t it show that they were meant to do it for us? So when he said the butler should get me the carriage, it wasn’t likely I was going to refuse, and up I drove to the very door!”

Jack stopped short in the middle of crossing the room, Pat peered round the corner of his chair and twinkled with mischievous enjoyment, Bridgie’s eyes opened as wide as saucers.

“Which door? What carriage? What romance are ye telling me? Haven’t you been with Sylvia since I left you?”

“’Deed I have not. What made you fancy I had?”

“There was nowhere else to go, and you had not come home. I made certain you were with Sylvia!”

“It’s a bad thing to be certain about what you don’t know. If any mischief had happened to me, it would be annoying to you to remember how you were laughing with your back to the fire, while I was run over in the street, and having my legs sawed off at the hospital.”

Jack frowned at that, and put a quick question.

“Have you been walking about by yourself? I won’t have it at this hour of the night. You can find your own way about the neighbourhood in the daytime, but I won’t have you going into town by yourself, or even across the road in the dark. London is not Knock, remember, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to get lost. Don’t let her roam about without you, Bridgie!”

“’Twas only a step, and barely four o’clock!” Bridgie’s forehead was fretted with anxious lines, but Pixie nodded back cheery reassurement.

“Don’t you repine about me, for I got on famously, and Mrs Wallace is coming herself to see you in the afternoon. I’ve engaged myself as a French lady to amuse the children, and you shall have the money to pay the bills. It was an advertisement in the paper, and you had to call between four and six, so I didn’t want you to know before everything was settled. I don’t know how much it will be, but Mr Wallace said I was worth a fortune, because I made them stop howling. There are only two, but outside the door you would think they were a dozen, and I made them laugh, and they sent me home in a carriage.”

“Whatisshe talking about?” Bridgie and Jack exchanged bewildered glances, and stared in incredulous silence at the little figure on the sofa. She had pulled off her hat, and with it the bow of ribbon, and the loosened hair hung down her back; her hands were crossed on her lap, there were dark shadows under her eyes. She looked so small and frail and childlike that Bridgie felt a lump rising in her throat at the thought of help coming from this strange and most unexpected quarter. She rose, and, going over to the sofa, took Pixie’s hand between her own.

“Is it the truth that you are telling us?”

“It is, then! The solemn truth! Every word of it.”

“What made you think there was any need for you to disturb yourself? What put it in your head to answer an advertisement at all?”

“Because I didn’t want to be a burden to ye, my dear, after all the money you’ve spent on me education!”

“A little midget like you to speak of being a burden! No one would guess you were there if you weren’t so upsetting! It’s no use fifty Mrs Wallaces coming to see me. Some other French lady will have to amuse her children. This one is wanted at home!”

Pixie smiled composedly, and squeezed the clinging hands.

“I knew you’d say ‘No’ at the start. So did she. She was first cross, and then she laughed, and said it would be a long, long time before I was ready to teach. But she didn’t really want teaching, only someone to be funny in French, and when she heard me telling tales, and the little girls both laughing, she began to think she would love to have me. You remember the stories you used to tell me, Jack, about the Spoopjacks and the Bobityshooties? I made up a new bit, and they simply loved it. It’s two hours every morning, and only ten minutes’ walk, and Thérèse says it’s no use beginning to be proud till you’ve paid your bills. You would like me to help you, wouldn’t you, Jack?”

“Shades of Mrs Hilliard!” muttered Jack, and shrugged his shoulders recklessly. “She will have a few volumes to write to me if I say ‘Yes!’ You are bound to help me, Piccaninny, whatever you are about, but I can’t bind myself to allow you to go out governessing before you are out of short frocks. It is Saturday to-morrow, so I shall be home in the afternoon, and see this Mrs Wallace for myself. It’s a bad scheme on the face of it, but it’s just possible it may be more feasible than it sounds.”

That was all the length which he would go for the moment, and Pixie was content to drop the subject, secure in her conviction that time and Mrs Wallace would win the victory. She was petted and fussed over to her heart’s content for the rest of the evening, and the story of her various efforts to retrieve the family fortunes was heard with breathless attention. She wondered why the listening faces wore such tender, pitiful expressions, why lazy Pat flushed, and Bridgie went over to her desk and spent a whole half-hour sorting out her bills. It never occurred to her that her earnest effort to take her own share of responsibility was a more eloquent stimulus than twenty lectures!

Next afternoon at three o’clock the two sisters and Sylvia Trevor stationed themselves in positions of vantage behind the curtains, and looked out eagerly for the advent of Mrs Wallace. Bridgie could not divest herself of a suspicion that the promise might have been given as the easiest way out of a difficulty, but before the half-hour struck a well-appointed carriage turned the corner of the road, the coachman glanced at the number on the door, and drew up his horses, when a fluffy head peered out of the window, and Pixie cried excitedly—

“That’s the thin one! That’s Viva! I expect she howled, and they could not keep her away. That’s Mrs Wallace! Isn’t it an elegant hat?”

Bridgie peeped and grew quite pink with excitement, for, truth to tell, mother and daughter made a charming picture as they came up the little path. Mrs Wallace looked almost like a girl herself in her becoming hat and veil, while the golden-haired child wore a white coat and cap edged with fluffy swan’s-down. Sylvia retreated to the dining-room.

Pixie ran to meet the visitors at the door, and the voice that exclaimed, “Bon jour, Mamzelle Paddy!” was in itself an augury of friendship. The next moment they were in the drawing-room, and Mrs Wallace was smilingly explaining the title.

“I am sure you must have been very much surprised to hear of yesterday’s interview, Miss O’Shaughnessy! ‘mamzelle Paddy,’ as my husband has named your small sister, has made quite a conquest of my little girls, and Viva refused to be left behind when she heard where I was going. I hope you were not very anxious about her absence yesterday?”

“Indeed I was not, for I took it for granted she was with some friends near by. Please sit down, and get warm. ’Twas a ridiculous idea of the child’s to suppose for one moment that she could fulfil your requirements; but she’s the baby of the family, and has never been thwarted, and such a kind little creature that she must try to help if there is any difficulty. It is good of you to take the trouble to come and explain, but indeed we have decided already that it is quite, quite impossible!”

Mrs Wallace gave a start of consternation, and the smile faded from her lips. She looked first at Bridgie, then across the room to where Viva stood on tiptoe dragging at Pixie’s sleeve, and reiterating, “Mamzelle! Mamzelle Paddy, will you come again to my nursery? Will you tell me more stories about those peoples in the lamp-posts?”

“Oh, don’t say it is impossible!” she said softly. “I want her to help me too, and I am so troubled about my children. Could she—could they both go into another room for a few minutes, while we talk it over together?”

“Certainly they could!” Bridgie raised her voice a tone higher. “Pixie dear, go to Sylvia in the dining-room and take the little girl with you. Show her some of your treasures!”

“I like cake!” remarked Viva pointedly. She skipped to the door, and stared round the hall with curious eyes. “You do live in a poky little house, don’t you? My mamma’s house is much bigger than your house. Where does the dining-room live? Is there a cupboard in it that you keep cake in? Is Sylvia your ’nother sister? Who is the man?”

The man was none other than handsome Jack himself, who was enjoying the rare luxury of atête-à-têtewith Sylvia Trevor, and was not too well pleased by this speedy interruption. He frowned when he heard the opening of the door, but when he turned round and saw the vision of pink and white and gold, he smiled in spite of himself, as most people did smile at the sight of Viva Wallace, and held out his hand invitingly.

“Hallo, whom have we here?”

“Quite well, thank you. How are you?” replied Viva fluently. She paid no attention to Sylvia at the other side of the fireplace, but leant confidingly against Jack’s chair, staring at him with rapt attention. His eyes looked as if they liked you very, very much; his moustache had sharp little ends which stood out stiff and straight, there was a lump in his throat which moved up and down as he spoke—altogether he was a most fascinating person, and quite deserving of attention. “Are you the papa?” she asked enviously. “My papa has got a brown face with lines in it. He is very old. My muzzer is old too. She is talking to the lady in the ’nother room, and she said I was to be amused. You are to amuse me!”

“No, no, quite a mistake. You must amuse me!” said Jack solemnly. “I have been out all day, and am tired and sleepy, so you must do something to cheer me up. What can you suggest, now, that would be really lively and entertaining?”

Viva reflected deeply.

“I’m learning the ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’!”

“You don’t say so!”

“Yes, I am. I’ll say it to you now, from the beginning right to the very miggle!”

“Thanks awfully. I should be delighted—another time. Not to-day, I think, if you don’t mind. I have rather a sore throat.”

Viva opened her eyes and stared at the Adam’s apple which showed above the white necktie. She was trying to puzzle out the connection between Mr O’Shaughnessy’s throat and the Pied Piper, but the difficulty was too great. She heaved a sigh, and hazarded another suggestion.

“You tellmea story!”

“That would never do. I should be entertaining you, and it ought to be the other way about.”

“I’ll tell you a story!”

“That’s better. Go ahead, then. What is it to be about? Fairies?”

“No, it’s not going to be about fairies,—fairies is silly. Giants are more sensibler than fairies, because there was a giant once. There was Golosher!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Golosher!”

“Don’t know the gentleman.”

“Oh, you naughty! And David killed him in the Bible. I’ll tell you a story about giants.”

“I don’t think I am interested in giants.”

“Princesses, then, beautiful princesses, and cruel people trying to be unkind to them, and princes running away and marrying them, and living happily ever afterwards.”

“That’s the style for my money! Fire away, and let us have plenty of adventure. I’ll lean back in this chair and listen to you.”

Viva moistened her lips, swallowed rapidly once or twice, and began her story in a shrill, high-pitched voice.

“Once upon a long, long time ago, there was a princess, and she was the most beautiful princess that was ever born. Everyone said so, and her face was as white as snow, and her hair as yellow as—”

“Excuse me—brown!”

“No, it wasn’t brown. Bright, curly, golden, down to her—”

“Then she couldn’t have been the most beautiful princess in the world, because I’ve seen the lady and her hair is brown.”

Jack stroked his moustache with a look of lamb-like innocence, and Sylvia could have shaken herself with annoyance because she could not help blushing and looking stupid and self-conscious. Pixie’s melodious gurgle sounded from the background, and Viva cried severely—

“You couldn’t have seen her, because she lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago, when you were a teeny baby. Golden hair down to her feet, and her teef were like pearls, and all the godfathers and godmuzzers came to the christening and gave her nice presinks, only one wicked old mugian who—”

“Pardon me! One wicked old—?”

“Mugian! He’s a man what does things. They always have them in stories—that the mamma had forgotten to ask, so he was angry and said she should tumble downstairs when she was grown-up and be lame ever after till a beautiful prince made her better. Oh, but I shouldn’t have told you that jest now. You must pitend that you forget I have told you. So then the beautiful princess—her true name was Mabel, but only I call her Norah because her hair was gold—”

Now it was Jack’s turn to gasp and search in vain for the connection between Norah and golden hair! It proved as impossible to discover as that between a sore throat and the Piper of Hamelin, but there was another allusion in the story which was too fortunate to be allowed to pass unnoticed.

“The princess was lame, was she? and no one could make her better but the prince? That’s very interesting. Could you tell me, now, how he managed the cure? It might be useful to me someday.”

“Was your princess a lame princess?”

“I think you had better go on with your story, Viva!” Jack said hurriedly. “Your mother may call you away before it is finished, and I should be disappointed. When did the prince arrive on the scene?”

“It doesn’t get to that yet. So the princess lived in a house where there were no stairs. Only one day when she was walking through the wood, there was a little house and she went in, and she said, ‘Oh, what funny things!’ and she went up them, and she tumbled down, and her foot was underneaf, so she was lame. An’ she lay on the sofa, and the queen-mamma cried, and the godfathers and the godmuzzers came flying up, only they could do nothing, and the king said anyone should have the land who made her better, an’ thousands an’ thousands tried, an’ at last the prince came riding along on a white horse, an’ he looked froo the window—”

“Jack dear, will you please come to the drawing-room? We want to consult you!” Bridgie’s head peered round the corner of the door, her cheeks quite pink, her eyes shining with excitement. She gripped her brother’s arm as he came to meet her, and whispered, “It’s the most extraordinary thing—she really means it! She is charming, Jack, charming; I can’t say ‘No’ to her. Come and try what you can do!”

But Jack was not a good hand at saying “No,” least of all to charming ladies, and Mrs Wallace took his measure at once, and felt that she had gained a friend.

“I am trying to persuade Miss O’Shaughnessy to lend your little sister to me for a short time every day, to help me with my children,” she said, smiling at him under lifted brows. “I understand that you knew nothing about her application, and when I first saw her I felt, as you must have done, that the idea was preposterous, but Viva and Inda fell desperately in love with her, and have talked of nothing else since she left. I think I followed their example, and I am quite sure my husband did. He thinks Mamzelle Paddy would be the solution of all our nursery troubles, if you could be induced to spare her to us. I would be very careful of her; I promise you that!”

Jack looked at Bridgie; Bridgie looked at Jack.

“I’d be delighted that she should help you, and it would be an amusement to her to play with the dear little girls. If she might come as a friend—”

“Oh, Miss O’Shaughnessy, how cruel of you, when her great idea was to help you! She would be a most welcome friend, but I could not consent to using her time without paying for it.”

Mrs Wallace had approached this question before, and had discovered that Bridgie was no more embarrassed by a reference to her poverty than had been Mamzelle Paddy herself. “We should think any sum cheap which ensured our little girls being happy and occupied, instead of crying and quarrelling, as I am sorry to say they do now for the greater part of the day. They are too young for regular lessons, but they already know French fairly well, and would soon be able to speak fluently.”

“I can’t judge of Pixie’s French, but her English is so Irish that it was a stroke of genius to offer herself in the character of a foreigner!” said Jack, stroking his moustache, and smiling to himself in whimsical fashion. “Of course, she is quite confident that she could do all you require, but you must not listen to her own account of herself. If you offered Pixie the command of the Channel Fleet, she’d accept without a qualm! If you want the kindest-hearted, most mischievous little ignoramus in the world, Mrs Wallace, it would be waste of time to search any farther, for you have found her already! She will keep your children happy, and never say a word that they wouldn’t be the better for hearing, but it won’t be the orthodox training! I fancy Pixie was a big surprise to the English boarding-school when she first arrived.”

“But she left with the prize for being the most popular and unselfish of the girls! Your sister has just shown me the books with the touching inscription. If she can teach my girlies to be as sweet and helpful, I shall not mind a few eccentricities. Two hours in the morning would not take her away too much from home, and she would have plenty of time left for her own music. Her ambition seemed to be to pay for her own lessons, so if I gave her thirty pounds, she could go to a really good master without feeling that she was overtaxing you. It would be such a pleasure to me too, Miss O’Shaughnessy. I feel sure your brother will agree, if you consent. Please say ‘Yes’!”

So it was left to Bridgie to make the final decision, and in after years she used to wonder what would have happened if she had refused her consent! It was a difficult problem, for to her old-fashioned notions it was a trifleinfra digfor a girl to work for herself, and it hurt her tender heart that the Piccaninny of all others should be the one to go out into the world.

What would the dear dead mother have said to such a project? What would the Major have said? What would Esmeralda think now, and, thinking, say, with all the impassioned eloquence of which she was mistress? Bridgie reflected earnestly on the questions, while Mrs Wallace watched her face with anxious eyes.

The dear mother had never been able to resign herself to the happy-go-lucky Irish customs, and had died before her time, worn-out with the strain of trying to make both ends meet. When she looked down from heaven with those clear angel eyes, would it seem more noble to her that her baby should preserve a puny social distinction at the cost of a purposeless life, or that she should use the talents which had been given to her for her own good and the good of others?

There could be little doubt how the mother would have decided, and as for the Major, Bridgie smiled with indulgent tenderness as she pictured, one after the other, the swift stages of his behaviour if he had been present to-day. Horror and indignation at the possibility that the Piccaninny should be in subjection to anyone but himself; irritated impatience that the O’Shaughnessys should be expected to pay for what they desired, like any ordinary, commonplace family; chuckling delight over the smartness of the child; and finally an even greater inability than his sons to say “No” to a charming woman! Storm he never so wildly, the Major would undoubtedly have ended by consenting to Mrs Wallace’s plea, while Esmeralda’s wrath would be kept within bounds by Geoffrey’s strong common sense.

Bridgie sighed and looked across the room to where Jack sat.

“If it is left to me,” she said slowly, “if I am to decide, I think I will say ‘Yes’! She shall come to you for a month on trial, Mrs Wallace, and we can see how it works.”

Mrs Wallace beamed with relief and satisfaction.

“That’s very kind!” she said. “I am truly grateful. I realise that your decision is unselfish, but believe me, you shall never regret it!”

And Bridgie remembered that prophecy, and smiled over it many times in the happy years to come.

Chapter Seventeen.Jack’s Discovery.Pixie received the intelligence that she was to begin her new duties on the following Monday with the unruffled composure of one who has expected no other decision. She asked eagerly what salary she was to receive, and was a trifle depressed to find that it did not run to three figures. Thirty pounds sounded very little, though she had only the vaguest notion of its purchasing value, but her ambition had been to supply the whole additional sum which was needed for the support of the household.Innocent Bridgie had no idea as to what might be expected under the circumstances, but Miss Munns, who knew everything, declared that the offer was a handsome one, and ten pounds in excess of the ordinary rate of payment. Still, as she sagely remarked, one could never tell! People sometimes seemed very generous and pleasant-spoken at first, and then turned out everything that was exacting and unreasonable. Several young friends of her own had gone out as governesses, and met with tragic adventures. Marianne Summers, the cousin of Summers’ Celebrated Snowflake Soap, was with a family at Rochester, and nursed a little boy all through scarlatina, and when she had toothache herself the lady said it was most inconvenient because a dinner-party was coming. No consideration whatever, and the food very poor. She was never so much as asked to have a second helping!“Maybe the lady had so many to help that she forgot to ask her. Couldn’t she ask herself? It would have been more friendly than grumbling behind her back,” said Pixie severely. “When I go out to meals with people I make myself at home. I went todéjeunerwith some friends in Paris, and I was so much at home that when they had cabbage, I remarked that I wished it had been cauliflower. They smiled, and looked quite pleasant!”Miss Munns looked over her spectacles, and grunted to herself. She considered Pixie O’Shaughnessy a most uncomfortable girl, and was never at ease in her society. She asked embarrassing questions, stared with unconcealed curiosity, while her innocence had a trick of developing into quite remarkable shrewdness at sudden and inappropriate moments. Miss Munns recalled several incidents when the gaze of the childlike eyes had filled her with a most unpleasant embarrassment, and declared that not for fifty thousand pounds would she have that child living in her house!Bridgie was different. She was invariably anxious to hear further anecdotes concerning relations and friends, and was such a docile pupil in domestic matters, that the old lady had the felicity of practically ruling two households instead of one. In the fervour of her resolve to turn over a new leaf, Bridgie had made no reservations, but had placed herself and her accounts in Miss Munns’s hands, and from that moment there was no drawing back. The weekly orders were supervised and cut down, the accounts carefully checked and paid to the hour, the receipts were endorsed and filed, so that they couldbe produced at a moment’s notice; extras were faithfully entered into the housekeeping ledger at the end of each day, and the whole account balanced to a laborious penny. When the penny was very difficult to find, Bridgie pleaded hard to be allowed to supply it from her private purse, and could never be quite brought to see that the result would not be the same, but it was a proud moment when Jack surveyed the ledger on Saturday evenings and wrote, “Examined, and found correct!” with a big flourish underneath the final addition. Then he would stroke his moustache and twinkle at her with amused eyes, as he said—“Bravo, Bridgie, right to a fraction! I’ll ask Miss Munns to take me in hand next—since she has scored such a triumph out of you. Evening classes two or three times a week, with Sylvia to sit by me and sharpen my pencils—that would be a happy way of combining instruction and amusement for the winter evenings, wouldn’t it?” and—shades of Esmeralda!—Bridgie smiled, and ejaculated, “You naughty boy!” in a tone as far removed from fault-finding as it is possible to imagine.Sylvia Trevor, however, being a young woman of spirit, was by no means disposed to provide amusement for Master Jack or any other masculine flirt. If any man wished to win her, she was worth wooing seriously, so she told herself with a tilt of the pretty dark head, but when Jack said one thing with his lips, beseeching Miss Munns to take pity on his ignorance, and put him on the path whereon he should walk, and another with his eyes, mutely inviting her to stay and flirt with him the while he pretended to listen—then her pride was roused, and she determined to teach him a wholesome lesson. She waited until Miss Munns had produced half a dozen ledgers to demonstrate the elaborate system of book-keeping by which she conducted her miniature establishment—until Jack had seated himself by her side and was irrevocably victimised for the evening; then she rose from her chair and said amiably—“I mustn’t disturb you. You will like to be quiet, so I’ll run across and chat to Bridgie for an hour, while you are away!”The “running” was a polite fiction, for in spite of massage and the most careful doctoring it would be many months before Sylvia could run again. By walking very deliberately she could just conceal her limp, and now as she turned towards the door she had a good view of Jack’s petrified glare of disgust.The picture of him sitting by the old lady’s side, while she prepared to teach him what he himself knew a dozen times better than herself, was too much for Sylvia’s composure, and around the corner of the door, where her aunt could not see her, she doubled up with silent laughter and cast on him a glance of such mocking triumph, such sparkling, dimpling, deliciously girl-like derision, as was more eloquent than a thousand gibes.Jack leapt to his feet; at that moment he would have given half he possessed to have rushed after the tantalising creature, to have stood over her, and watched her self-confidence give place gradually to embarrassment, and the pink flush rise to the pale cheeks as it had a trick of doing under his scrutiny, but, alas! the door was shut, and Miss Munns’s voice inquired soberly—“Do you want the lamp? Put it on the mat, please. You can’t be too careful of lamps. If the oil gets on the cloth, nothing will take it out!”“’Twill be a lesson to me while I live!” sighed Jack sorrowfully to himself. He was smarting with annoyance and impatience, but he managed, as not one man in a hundred could have done, to keep his irritation to himself, and be absolutely amiable and courteous to his instructress. Miss Munns thought him a most well-disposed young man, and did not discover one of the anxious glances at the clock, nor the yawns so dexterously hidden beneath strokings of the moustache.When three-quarters of an hour had passed by, Jack felt as if the interview had lasted a fortnight, but fate was kinder to him than he deserved, and sent relief in the person of the widow occupant of Number Ten, who arrived to pay an evening call, cribbage-board in hand. Then Mr Jack departed, and paced up and down the road smoking cigarettes, and meditating on revenge. He caught the echo of girlish laughter from within his own threshold, and could easily picture the scene within—the two sisters huddling over the fire, Sylvia seated in state in the grandfather chair, Pat, her devoted admirer, perched on the end of a table, and placidly maintaining his position in spite of repeated injunctions to run away.He pictured Sylvia’s face also as he had often seen it—the sharply-cut little features, the suspicion of pride and self-will in aquiline nose and firmly-moulded chin, the short, roughened hair, which was such a cross to its owner, but which gave her a gallant, boyish air, which one spectator at least found irresistibly piquant. He saw the firelight play upon the pretty pink dress and the rings on the restless hands, saw the brown eyes sparkle with laughter, and grow suddenly soft and wistful. It seemed to him that they were turned towards himself, that her thoughts were meeting his half-way, that she was already repenting, and dreading the result of her hasty flight.Jack O’Shaughnessy stopped short in his pacings up and down, and stood staring before him with a strange, rapt expression. Out there in the prosaic street the greatest discovery of his life had come to him, and the wonder of it took away his breath. Young men often imagine themselves in love with half a dozen pretty faces before they have reached five-and-twenty, but to most of them there comes at last, in the providence of God, the one woman who is as far removed from the passing fancies of an hour as the moon from her attendant stars. She has appeared, and for him thenceforth there is no more doubt or change; his life is, humanly speaking, in her hands, and her influence over him is the greatest of all the talents which has been entrusted to her care. Too often he is careless about religious matters, if not actively antagonistic, and her light words may confirm him in a life of indifference; but, on the other hand, his heart is never so tender and ready to be influenced as at the moment when she has given her life into his charge, and this golden opportunity is hers to seize and turn to lasting good. In the best sense of the word she is his Queen and he is her knight, who will perform noble and gallant deeds at her behest.Jack of the humbugging eyes, handsome, happy-go-lucky Jack O’Shaughnessy, had been what he called “in love” since the days when he wore pinafores and little round collars with frills at the edge, but he had never known what love meant until this winter evening, when at the vision of Sylvia’s face his heart leapt with painful violence, and he stood still appalled by the strength of his own emotions.He had known Sylvia Trevor for one month, four short weeks in all, yet now here she was occupying the foremost position in his thoughts, making the past years seem blank and empty, blocking the gate of the future with her girlish figure. Jack felt dazed and bewildered, a trifle alarmed, too, at the extent of the journey which he had travelled so unthinkingly, but he never attempted to deny its reality. He loved Sylvia—that was an established truth; the only question which remained concerned the next step in the drama.When a man loved a girl, when a girl blushed when he appeared, and, despite all her little airs of superiority, could not hide her pleasure in his society, it was generally easy enough to prophesy a speedy engagement and marriage, but what if Providence had made other ties for the man before the Queen’s appearance? What if, though unmarried, he was still master of a household, a bread-winner to whom brothers and sisters looked for support?Jack’s thoughts drifted longingly towards a little home of his own, where Sylvia reigned as mistress, and cast pretty, saucy glances at him from the other side of the table, but he knew all the time that it was the veriest castle of dreams. He could not keep a wife who was hard pressed to fulfil his present obligations; marriage was out of the question until the boys were self-supporting, and the girls either settled in homes of their own, or comfortably portioned off. That being so, it was plainly the duty of an honourable man to keep out of the girl’s way, to make no attempt to win her affections, but to hide his love both from her and those at home, who would otherwise be made to feel themselves in the way.Jack turned and renewed his pacings up and down. There was a heavy weight of depression on his spirits, but he never flinched from the right path, nor did it occur to him that there was anything heroic in this simple accepting of a hard duty. Family affection was very strong among the O’Shaughnessys, and not even the glamour of first love could make him grudge anything to Bridgie and Pixie, or the two big boys who looked up to him with such touching confidence. His first duty was to them, and it would be “caddish” to let them suspect any sacrifice in its fulfilment. A poor, commonplace word, which it is safe to say would have a nobler translation in the Great White Book, wherein are written the records of men’s lives!Sylvia blushed as she heard the key turn in the latch, and cast an apprehensive glance at the door. Would Jack be angry? How would he look? What would he say? The first glance showed him graver than usual, but with no shadow of offence in look or bearing, and for some unaccountable reason her spirits sank as she met his unclouded smile. He sat down and held out his hand to Pixie, who promptly seated herself on the arm of his chair, and amused herself by trying the effects of various arrangements of the curling brown hair. Parted in the middle, it gave a ridiculously dandified expression to the handsome face; pulled forward in shaggy locks over the forehead, the dandy died a sudden death, and Pat of the cabin and clay pipe appeared in his stead; combed upward by ten little fingers until it stood erect above the forehead, nationality underwent an even more startling change.“Voilà, Adolph!” cried Pixie triumphantly. “Me I have seen a hundred men, but a hundred, all the same as thou every day I promenade me in Paris!” And Jack smiled and, to Bridgie’s surprise, allowed himself to be disfigured without a protest—a surprising thing when a pretty girl was among the spectators.When the hairdressing operations were concluded, he held Pixie’s hand in his own, as if unwilling to let her go, and turned towards Sylvia with a smile.“I think your aunt quite enjoyed giving me a lesson, and I was very much interested in her original system of book-keeping. What a wonderful old dear she is, so energetic and full of interest in her fellow-creatures! I must go to see her again, and have a game of cribbage, which appears to be her pet dissipation. I’m fond of old people, but I daresay they get a little trying if you have no variety. If I relieve guard sometimes, it will set you free to have a chat with the girls!”Was he sarcastic? Was he paying her back in her own coin? Sylvia stared dumbly, but could see no hidden meaning in the glance which met hers so frankly. “Thanks awfully. You are kind!” she cried with enthusiasm, but in her heart she thought the kindness the most cruel treatment she had ever experienced. As soon as she could leave naturally she rose to say good-bye, and then came a fresh blow, for, instead of escorting her across the road as he had insisted on doing hitherto, Jack kept his arm round Pixie’s shoulder, and deputed Pat to take his place.“Now, then, you lazy fellow, get your hat, and see Miss Trevor home!”Pat was delighted, and after all it was natural enough that Jack should not care to turn out in the cold so soon after coming in, and yet—and yet—Sylvia stood at her bedroom window looking at the lights across the road, and as she looked they grew strangely dull and faint. Triumphs are dearly won sometimes, and her mood to-night was the reverse of victorious.

Pixie received the intelligence that she was to begin her new duties on the following Monday with the unruffled composure of one who has expected no other decision. She asked eagerly what salary she was to receive, and was a trifle depressed to find that it did not run to three figures. Thirty pounds sounded very little, though she had only the vaguest notion of its purchasing value, but her ambition had been to supply the whole additional sum which was needed for the support of the household.

Innocent Bridgie had no idea as to what might be expected under the circumstances, but Miss Munns, who knew everything, declared that the offer was a handsome one, and ten pounds in excess of the ordinary rate of payment. Still, as she sagely remarked, one could never tell! People sometimes seemed very generous and pleasant-spoken at first, and then turned out everything that was exacting and unreasonable. Several young friends of her own had gone out as governesses, and met with tragic adventures. Marianne Summers, the cousin of Summers’ Celebrated Snowflake Soap, was with a family at Rochester, and nursed a little boy all through scarlatina, and when she had toothache herself the lady said it was most inconvenient because a dinner-party was coming. No consideration whatever, and the food very poor. She was never so much as asked to have a second helping!

“Maybe the lady had so many to help that she forgot to ask her. Couldn’t she ask herself? It would have been more friendly than grumbling behind her back,” said Pixie severely. “When I go out to meals with people I make myself at home. I went todéjeunerwith some friends in Paris, and I was so much at home that when they had cabbage, I remarked that I wished it had been cauliflower. They smiled, and looked quite pleasant!”

Miss Munns looked over her spectacles, and grunted to herself. She considered Pixie O’Shaughnessy a most uncomfortable girl, and was never at ease in her society. She asked embarrassing questions, stared with unconcealed curiosity, while her innocence had a trick of developing into quite remarkable shrewdness at sudden and inappropriate moments. Miss Munns recalled several incidents when the gaze of the childlike eyes had filled her with a most unpleasant embarrassment, and declared that not for fifty thousand pounds would she have that child living in her house!

Bridgie was different. She was invariably anxious to hear further anecdotes concerning relations and friends, and was such a docile pupil in domestic matters, that the old lady had the felicity of practically ruling two households instead of one. In the fervour of her resolve to turn over a new leaf, Bridgie had made no reservations, but had placed herself and her accounts in Miss Munns’s hands, and from that moment there was no drawing back. The weekly orders were supervised and cut down, the accounts carefully checked and paid to the hour, the receipts were endorsed and filed, so that they couldbe produced at a moment’s notice; extras were faithfully entered into the housekeeping ledger at the end of each day, and the whole account balanced to a laborious penny. When the penny was very difficult to find, Bridgie pleaded hard to be allowed to supply it from her private purse, and could never be quite brought to see that the result would not be the same, but it was a proud moment when Jack surveyed the ledger on Saturday evenings and wrote, “Examined, and found correct!” with a big flourish underneath the final addition. Then he would stroke his moustache and twinkle at her with amused eyes, as he said—

“Bravo, Bridgie, right to a fraction! I’ll ask Miss Munns to take me in hand next—since she has scored such a triumph out of you. Evening classes two or three times a week, with Sylvia to sit by me and sharpen my pencils—that would be a happy way of combining instruction and amusement for the winter evenings, wouldn’t it?” and—shades of Esmeralda!—Bridgie smiled, and ejaculated, “You naughty boy!” in a tone as far removed from fault-finding as it is possible to imagine.

Sylvia Trevor, however, being a young woman of spirit, was by no means disposed to provide amusement for Master Jack or any other masculine flirt. If any man wished to win her, she was worth wooing seriously, so she told herself with a tilt of the pretty dark head, but when Jack said one thing with his lips, beseeching Miss Munns to take pity on his ignorance, and put him on the path whereon he should walk, and another with his eyes, mutely inviting her to stay and flirt with him the while he pretended to listen—then her pride was roused, and she determined to teach him a wholesome lesson. She waited until Miss Munns had produced half a dozen ledgers to demonstrate the elaborate system of book-keeping by which she conducted her miniature establishment—until Jack had seated himself by her side and was irrevocably victimised for the evening; then she rose from her chair and said amiably—

“I mustn’t disturb you. You will like to be quiet, so I’ll run across and chat to Bridgie for an hour, while you are away!”

The “running” was a polite fiction, for in spite of massage and the most careful doctoring it would be many months before Sylvia could run again. By walking very deliberately she could just conceal her limp, and now as she turned towards the door she had a good view of Jack’s petrified glare of disgust.

The picture of him sitting by the old lady’s side, while she prepared to teach him what he himself knew a dozen times better than herself, was too much for Sylvia’s composure, and around the corner of the door, where her aunt could not see her, she doubled up with silent laughter and cast on him a glance of such mocking triumph, such sparkling, dimpling, deliciously girl-like derision, as was more eloquent than a thousand gibes.

Jack leapt to his feet; at that moment he would have given half he possessed to have rushed after the tantalising creature, to have stood over her, and watched her self-confidence give place gradually to embarrassment, and the pink flush rise to the pale cheeks as it had a trick of doing under his scrutiny, but, alas! the door was shut, and Miss Munns’s voice inquired soberly—

“Do you want the lamp? Put it on the mat, please. You can’t be too careful of lamps. If the oil gets on the cloth, nothing will take it out!”

“’Twill be a lesson to me while I live!” sighed Jack sorrowfully to himself. He was smarting with annoyance and impatience, but he managed, as not one man in a hundred could have done, to keep his irritation to himself, and be absolutely amiable and courteous to his instructress. Miss Munns thought him a most well-disposed young man, and did not discover one of the anxious glances at the clock, nor the yawns so dexterously hidden beneath strokings of the moustache.

When three-quarters of an hour had passed by, Jack felt as if the interview had lasted a fortnight, but fate was kinder to him than he deserved, and sent relief in the person of the widow occupant of Number Ten, who arrived to pay an evening call, cribbage-board in hand. Then Mr Jack departed, and paced up and down the road smoking cigarettes, and meditating on revenge. He caught the echo of girlish laughter from within his own threshold, and could easily picture the scene within—the two sisters huddling over the fire, Sylvia seated in state in the grandfather chair, Pat, her devoted admirer, perched on the end of a table, and placidly maintaining his position in spite of repeated injunctions to run away.

He pictured Sylvia’s face also as he had often seen it—the sharply-cut little features, the suspicion of pride and self-will in aquiline nose and firmly-moulded chin, the short, roughened hair, which was such a cross to its owner, but which gave her a gallant, boyish air, which one spectator at least found irresistibly piquant. He saw the firelight play upon the pretty pink dress and the rings on the restless hands, saw the brown eyes sparkle with laughter, and grow suddenly soft and wistful. It seemed to him that they were turned towards himself, that her thoughts were meeting his half-way, that she was already repenting, and dreading the result of her hasty flight.

Jack O’Shaughnessy stopped short in his pacings up and down, and stood staring before him with a strange, rapt expression. Out there in the prosaic street the greatest discovery of his life had come to him, and the wonder of it took away his breath. Young men often imagine themselves in love with half a dozen pretty faces before they have reached five-and-twenty, but to most of them there comes at last, in the providence of God, the one woman who is as far removed from the passing fancies of an hour as the moon from her attendant stars. She has appeared, and for him thenceforth there is no more doubt or change; his life is, humanly speaking, in her hands, and her influence over him is the greatest of all the talents which has been entrusted to her care. Too often he is careless about religious matters, if not actively antagonistic, and her light words may confirm him in a life of indifference; but, on the other hand, his heart is never so tender and ready to be influenced as at the moment when she has given her life into his charge, and this golden opportunity is hers to seize and turn to lasting good. In the best sense of the word she is his Queen and he is her knight, who will perform noble and gallant deeds at her behest.

Jack of the humbugging eyes, handsome, happy-go-lucky Jack O’Shaughnessy, had been what he called “in love” since the days when he wore pinafores and little round collars with frills at the edge, but he had never known what love meant until this winter evening, when at the vision of Sylvia’s face his heart leapt with painful violence, and he stood still appalled by the strength of his own emotions.

He had known Sylvia Trevor for one month, four short weeks in all, yet now here she was occupying the foremost position in his thoughts, making the past years seem blank and empty, blocking the gate of the future with her girlish figure. Jack felt dazed and bewildered, a trifle alarmed, too, at the extent of the journey which he had travelled so unthinkingly, but he never attempted to deny its reality. He loved Sylvia—that was an established truth; the only question which remained concerned the next step in the drama.

When a man loved a girl, when a girl blushed when he appeared, and, despite all her little airs of superiority, could not hide her pleasure in his society, it was generally easy enough to prophesy a speedy engagement and marriage, but what if Providence had made other ties for the man before the Queen’s appearance? What if, though unmarried, he was still master of a household, a bread-winner to whom brothers and sisters looked for support?

Jack’s thoughts drifted longingly towards a little home of his own, where Sylvia reigned as mistress, and cast pretty, saucy glances at him from the other side of the table, but he knew all the time that it was the veriest castle of dreams. He could not keep a wife who was hard pressed to fulfil his present obligations; marriage was out of the question until the boys were self-supporting, and the girls either settled in homes of their own, or comfortably portioned off. That being so, it was plainly the duty of an honourable man to keep out of the girl’s way, to make no attempt to win her affections, but to hide his love both from her and those at home, who would otherwise be made to feel themselves in the way.

Jack turned and renewed his pacings up and down. There was a heavy weight of depression on his spirits, but he never flinched from the right path, nor did it occur to him that there was anything heroic in this simple accepting of a hard duty. Family affection was very strong among the O’Shaughnessys, and not even the glamour of first love could make him grudge anything to Bridgie and Pixie, or the two big boys who looked up to him with such touching confidence. His first duty was to them, and it would be “caddish” to let them suspect any sacrifice in its fulfilment. A poor, commonplace word, which it is safe to say would have a nobler translation in the Great White Book, wherein are written the records of men’s lives!

Sylvia blushed as she heard the key turn in the latch, and cast an apprehensive glance at the door. Would Jack be angry? How would he look? What would he say? The first glance showed him graver than usual, but with no shadow of offence in look or bearing, and for some unaccountable reason her spirits sank as she met his unclouded smile. He sat down and held out his hand to Pixie, who promptly seated herself on the arm of his chair, and amused herself by trying the effects of various arrangements of the curling brown hair. Parted in the middle, it gave a ridiculously dandified expression to the handsome face; pulled forward in shaggy locks over the forehead, the dandy died a sudden death, and Pat of the cabin and clay pipe appeared in his stead; combed upward by ten little fingers until it stood erect above the forehead, nationality underwent an even more startling change.

“Voilà, Adolph!” cried Pixie triumphantly. “Me I have seen a hundred men, but a hundred, all the same as thou every day I promenade me in Paris!” And Jack smiled and, to Bridgie’s surprise, allowed himself to be disfigured without a protest—a surprising thing when a pretty girl was among the spectators.

When the hairdressing operations were concluded, he held Pixie’s hand in his own, as if unwilling to let her go, and turned towards Sylvia with a smile.

“I think your aunt quite enjoyed giving me a lesson, and I was very much interested in her original system of book-keeping. What a wonderful old dear she is, so energetic and full of interest in her fellow-creatures! I must go to see her again, and have a game of cribbage, which appears to be her pet dissipation. I’m fond of old people, but I daresay they get a little trying if you have no variety. If I relieve guard sometimes, it will set you free to have a chat with the girls!”

Was he sarcastic? Was he paying her back in her own coin? Sylvia stared dumbly, but could see no hidden meaning in the glance which met hers so frankly. “Thanks awfully. You are kind!” she cried with enthusiasm, but in her heart she thought the kindness the most cruel treatment she had ever experienced. As soon as she could leave naturally she rose to say good-bye, and then came a fresh blow, for, instead of escorting her across the road as he had insisted on doing hitherto, Jack kept his arm round Pixie’s shoulder, and deputed Pat to take his place.

“Now, then, you lazy fellow, get your hat, and see Miss Trevor home!”

Pat was delighted, and after all it was natural enough that Jack should not care to turn out in the cold so soon after coming in, and yet—and yet—Sylvia stood at her bedroom window looking at the lights across the road, and as she looked they grew strangely dull and faint. Triumphs are dearly won sometimes, and her mood to-night was the reverse of victorious.

Chapter Eighteen.At the Circus.Mamzelle Paddy began and continued her work in the Wallace nursery with complete satisfaction to all concerned. Esmeralda, it is true, had surpassed herself in violence of diction in the letter which came in answer to the one breaking the news; but while Bridgie shed tears of distress, and Jack frowned impatience, the person against whom the hurricane of invective was hurled, received it with unruffled and even sympathetic composure.As Pixie read over the crowded sheets her eye flashed approval of dramatic points, she set her lips, and wagged her head, entering so thoroughly into the spirit of the writer that she unconsciously adopted her manner when aroused, and when the concluding words were read, heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. “She’ll feel a lot better after that!” she remarked tersely, and the prophecy could not fail to be comforting to those who knew Mrs Hilliard’s temperament.After such an outburst, repentance might be expected to set in even more speedily than usual, and a peace-offering in the shape of a hamper crowded with good things could be confidently looked for in the course of the next few days. Esmeralda disliked formal apologies, and from the boys’ point of view, at least, turkeys and game made a more eloquentamende.Viva and Inda Wallace were loving and lovable children, but possessed with a nervous restlessness, an insatiable curiosity, and with such easily-roused tempers as would have reduced an ordinary adult governess to despair within a very short period. Their delicate mother was occupied with many social duties, and the father, though devoted to his pretty daughters, had little patience with their vagaries, while the frequent screaming attacks which sounded through the house had a trying effect on nerves already strained by long residence abroad.Parents and servants alike breathed sighs of relief when each morning punctually as the clock struck ten, Mamzelle Paddy came running upstairs primed with half a dozen thrilling devices for amusement and occupation. Viva, as ringleader and rebel-in-chief, had flatly refused to speak, or listen to, a word of French, but when it was presently revealed to her that the Spoopjacks understood no other language, there was no course left but to withdraw her opposition. The Bobityshooties were English, and stupid at that, but by the time that Nicholas Spoopjack had succeeded in teaching them how to address him with propriety, the two unsuspicious listeners to the conversation had themselves mastered the lesson without once suspecting what they were about.The adventures which those two enterprising and admirable families went through, were as varied as they were endless, and each day brought a thrilling development of the situation. Nicholas Spoopjack thought nothing of going out in a diving-bell in the morning, and a balloon in the afternoon, while the Bobityshooties entertained royalty to dinner in the kitchen cupboard, and feasted luxuriously on the cruets, and the pinked-out paper which covered the shelves.“She don’t teach us nuffin’: we only plays!” was little Inda’s summing up of the situation; but a moment later she would repeat a dialogue which had taken place between the rival factions during the morning, reproducing, with the wonderful imitative faculty of children, the very accent and gesture with which it had been delivered, and her parents would look at each other with delighted appreciation.Mamzelle Paddy was a grand institution, and being generously disposed people, Mr and Mrs Wallace endeavoured to show their gratitude by including her in the many amusements which were arranged for the children’s benefit. She accompanied them on sight-seeing expeditions, organised games at evening parties, and on one memorable occasion paid a visit to the circus. Pixie had always cherished a passion for clowns, and when in Paris had appreciated nothing more than an evening at the “Nouveau Cirque,” where Auguste the Frenchman played a secondary part to his English brother, and the performance concluded with a play in which the British tourist played a large part, conspicuous in plaid suits, sailor hats, and thick-soled shoes. She was all eagerness to see the London circus, and nearly as much excited as her pupils, as they drove up to the door, and took their seats on the red velvet chairs.Inda sat by her mother and stared solemnly around, but Viva insisted upon being next her dear Mamzelle, and pranced up and down in a manner which augured ill for future comfort. Once she began to fidget, adieu to all hope of peace for her companions. Once she began to ask questions, it was safe to predict that she would go on until despair seized those who were obliged to answer. Pixie recognised signs of the coming attack, and managed an adroit change of places which would leave Mrs Wallace free to enjoy the afternoon, and punctually at three o’clock the performance began.The ring-master walked in and cracked his whip; the clown tumbled head over heels into the arena, and cried, “Here we are again!” the lady rider jumped through paper hoops, and blew kisses to the audience. Viva’s cheeks grew a vivid pink, and at each change in the performance she adopted a change of position. When the hook of her jacket had been extricated from the hair of the lady in front, she perched herself on the arm of her own chair; when she had applauded herself backward into Pixie’s arms, she leant against the supercilious-looking gentleman in the next seat, and tickled his cheeks with her fluffy hair. Then the first wonder wore away, and she found her tongue.“Why does the clown look like that?”“It’s a way they have in the family. They always have those funny eyes, and red and white faces.”“Did he always look like that?”“He did—all the time he has been a clown.”“Is it the same clown that was here before?”“It says on the paper it’s a new one for the occasion.”“Then why does he say he is here again?”“I’ll ask him next time we meet! Hush now, and listen to what he is saying. See how they are all laughing!”“Does the clown sleep in the circus?”“’Deed he does not, poor creature! There are no beds, and the seats are too hard.”“Where does he sleep, then? What is his true home?”“Number Seven, Poplar Gardens, corner of Phillamore Park—the corner house with the red curtains!”Pixie understood her pupil’s love of detail by this time, and Viva put her head on one side and stared at her with gratified admiration. If she had asked her mother, she would have looked tired and sighed, and said, “My dear child! how shouldIknow? Don’t ask ridiculous questions,” but Mamzelle Paddy knew better than that.Her face assumed an expression of radiant satisfaction as she pondered on that house in Poplar Gardens. Big and grey, with flower boxes in the windows and little clowns looking out of the nursery windows. Delightful! She was silent for several minutes, and the supercilious gentleman took advantage of the pause to examine the party with curious eyes. The elegant-looking woman was plainly the mother of the little girls, but who was this, who was scarcely more than a child herself, who was addressed as “Mamzelle” and spoke with a strong Irish accent? He stared at her, and Viva discovering his glance turned round with her back to the ring, and stared back with leisurely enjoyment.At first her face expressed nothing but curiosity, but gradually her features became twisted, the lips down drawn, the eyebrows elevated to an unnatural height, until the beholder realised with horror that she was experimenting on his own expression, and endeavouring to copy it on her own small visage. Many a long year had passed since he had known what it meant to blush, but he blushed then, and hitched round in his seat to hide his scarlet face from view, while Viva once more turned her attention to the ring.The white-skirted lady had disappeared and another was cantering round, clad in a riding habit and gentleman’s hat. The horse was black, and shone like satin; he pawed the ground with dainty, cat-like tread; the ring-master followed him as he went, and cracked his whip in encouraging fashion. Viva planted one foot on Pixie’s toe, and jumped up and down to attract attention.“Is the gentleman really angry, that he cracks his whip? Does he pitend to be angry? If he pitends to be angry, why do all the others pitend that they think he doesn’t pitend, but only,—Why does the gentleman crack his whip?”“Maybe he hears you talking! I saw him cast his eye upon you,” replied Pixie sagely, and the supercilious gentleman pointed the sentence with a sigh, and privately resolved to remove his seat at the first opportunity.The threat of the whip, however, had the effect of quietening Miss Viva for a good two minutes, and in the meantime Fate sent an unexpected deliverance. Certain portions of the auditorium were portioned off into squares, which did duty for private boxes, and into the nearest of these there now entered a party of ladies and children, in whom he recognised some intimate friends. To advance towards them and beg the use of a vacant chair was the work of a moment, when he proceeded to pour the story of his woes into the ear of the young lady by his side. She was fair and pretty, charmingly dressed, and almost as supercilious in expression as he was himself.“Little wretch! How impossible of her!” she ejaculated, and bent forward to examine the wretch forthwith.Viva had climbed on the empty seat, and was craning her little face to right and left to discover where the deserter had fled. With her great blue eyes and rose-leaf complexion set in a frame of golden hair, she looked like an angel from heaven, or one of the sweet-faced cherubs who float in space at the top of Christmas cards and valentines.But it was not on Viva that the young lady’s attention was riveted, but upon the figure by her side—Mamzelle Paddy in all the glory of a French hat, wearing the very biggest hair-ribbon in her possession, in honour of the occasion. At sight of the profile the young lady started and cried, “It is! It must be!” Then she dodged backwards, saw the hat, and became filled with doubt. “No, it can’t be! It’s much too smart!”Finally Pixie turned round to apostrophise Miss Viva, who was in the act of striding the back of her chair, and immediately a flash of recognition leapt from eye to eye. The French hat nodded until the feathers fairly quivered with the strain, and the face beneath became a beam of delight, in which eyes disappeared and the parted lips stretched back to a surprising distance. The fair-haired young lady had more respect to appearance in her recognition, but all the same she grew quite pink with pleasure, and cried eagerly—“It’s my dearest friend! We were at school together, but she has been in Paris finishing her education, and I have not heard from her since her return. I must speak to her in the interval—I really must! You can’t think what a fascinating little creature she is when you get to know her.”“Ah, really! She looks distinctly—er—out of the common,” drawled the supercilious man lazily. “Rather interesting-looking woman, the children’s mother. Some relation of your friend, I suppose?”“Oh, I suppose so! The O’Shaughnessys are a very good family. Very well connected. Beautiful old place in Ireland,” drawled the young lady in her turn, and in the intervals of the performance she proceeded to expatiate on the grandeur of the O’Shaughnessy family, the beauty of Esmeralda, and the riches of her husband, until her companion looked forward with increased interest to the coming introduction.At the first interval Pixie came forward in response to eager beckonings, and stood leaning against the side of the box talking to her friend, with superb disregard of the more extended audience.“Fancy, now, the two of us meeting without knowing that we were here! You look quite old, Lottie, with your hair done up. Turn your head and let me see the back! D’you still curl it with slate-pencils, like you did at school? I came home at Christmas, and I’ve thought of writing ever since, but I’ve been too busy. I suppose you’re busy too, now you are grown-up and living at home. Have you come out, and gone to dances in low necks? We had an old servant at Knock, and one day a friend came to lunch and she says to Bridgie, ‘That’s a fine, handsome young lady!’ ‘She is,’ says Bridgie. ‘She’s just come out!’ ‘Out of w’ere?’ says Molly, staring.”Pixie darted a quick glance round the box to enjoy the general appreciation of her joke, then gave a low chuckle of satisfaction. “Ye’ll never guess what I’m doing!”“No,” said Lottie Vane complacently. She too had noticed the smiles of the audience, and was anxious to encourage her friend in her reminiscences. In society people were always grateful for being amused, and if in her recital Pixie let fall further references to the standing and importance of her family, why, so much the better for all concerned.“What mischief are you up to now, you funny little thing?”“I’m in service!” said Pixie proudly.The shocked amaze of Lottie’s expression, the involuntary rustle of surprise which went round the box, were as so many tributes to the thrilling nature of the intelligence, and she waited a moment to enjoy it before pointing unabashed in the direction of the two children, and condescending to further explanations.“Me pupils! I’ve been with them now for over a month.”“What do you mean? How absurd you are, Pixie!” cried Lottie irritably. “In service—you! I never heard such nonsense. As if you were a servant! I don’t know what you are talking about!”“I get wages, anyhow, and that’s all I care about. They are my pupils, I tell you, and I’ve brought them here with their mother for a little diversion. I’ve the training of them every morning for a couple of hours, and thirty pounds a year paid every month. Jack and I make enough between us to support the family.”“You don’t really mean it?” gasped Lottie, horrified. Her cheeks were scarlet, and it was evident that she was profoundly uncomfortable, but as she met the triumphant eyes her face softened, and she made a valiant effort to retain composure. “You mean to say you have turned into a governess at sixteen—you who were always at the bottom of the class, and couldn’t get a sum right to save your life! Poor little girls, I pity their education! How did you ever persuade the mother to take you?”Mamzelle Paddy tossed her head with complacent pride.“’Deed, me dear, the room was packed with them, and natives at that, and she chose me before the whole bunch. I’m not supposed to teach them anything but French, and I don’t teach that except by playing games. But I keep them from crying and quarrelling, and ye don’t need to be head of your class for that! ’Twasn’t cleverness she took me for, as she told me plainly the first day I went; ’twas m’influence!”A smothered laugh went round the box at the sound of this curious compound word, uttered in tones of complacent pride; but Lottie Vane did not laugh, and her hand stretched out involuntarily and clasped the little fingers which lay on the side of the box. Her face lost its supercilious expression, and grew sweet and womanly.“Dear little Pixie,” she said softly, “I don’t pity the pupils after all. I think they are very well off. May I come over and be introduced to them and their mother? She must be a very wise woman.”The two girls walked forward together towards the spot where Mrs Wallace was sitting, and the supercilious man looked after them with thoughtful eyes. He had always admired Miss Lottie Vane, though he had privately sneered at her snobbish tendencies, but it occurred to him to-day that he had been over-hasty in judgment. How sweet she had looked as she answered her little friend, how kindly had been the tones of her voice! He felt his heart thrill with the beginning of a new and deeper interest.

Mamzelle Paddy began and continued her work in the Wallace nursery with complete satisfaction to all concerned. Esmeralda, it is true, had surpassed herself in violence of diction in the letter which came in answer to the one breaking the news; but while Bridgie shed tears of distress, and Jack frowned impatience, the person against whom the hurricane of invective was hurled, received it with unruffled and even sympathetic composure.

As Pixie read over the crowded sheets her eye flashed approval of dramatic points, she set her lips, and wagged her head, entering so thoroughly into the spirit of the writer that she unconsciously adopted her manner when aroused, and when the concluding words were read, heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. “She’ll feel a lot better after that!” she remarked tersely, and the prophecy could not fail to be comforting to those who knew Mrs Hilliard’s temperament.

After such an outburst, repentance might be expected to set in even more speedily than usual, and a peace-offering in the shape of a hamper crowded with good things could be confidently looked for in the course of the next few days. Esmeralda disliked formal apologies, and from the boys’ point of view, at least, turkeys and game made a more eloquentamende.

Viva and Inda Wallace were loving and lovable children, but possessed with a nervous restlessness, an insatiable curiosity, and with such easily-roused tempers as would have reduced an ordinary adult governess to despair within a very short period. Their delicate mother was occupied with many social duties, and the father, though devoted to his pretty daughters, had little patience with their vagaries, while the frequent screaming attacks which sounded through the house had a trying effect on nerves already strained by long residence abroad.

Parents and servants alike breathed sighs of relief when each morning punctually as the clock struck ten, Mamzelle Paddy came running upstairs primed with half a dozen thrilling devices for amusement and occupation. Viva, as ringleader and rebel-in-chief, had flatly refused to speak, or listen to, a word of French, but when it was presently revealed to her that the Spoopjacks understood no other language, there was no course left but to withdraw her opposition. The Bobityshooties were English, and stupid at that, but by the time that Nicholas Spoopjack had succeeded in teaching them how to address him with propriety, the two unsuspicious listeners to the conversation had themselves mastered the lesson without once suspecting what they were about.

The adventures which those two enterprising and admirable families went through, were as varied as they were endless, and each day brought a thrilling development of the situation. Nicholas Spoopjack thought nothing of going out in a diving-bell in the morning, and a balloon in the afternoon, while the Bobityshooties entertained royalty to dinner in the kitchen cupboard, and feasted luxuriously on the cruets, and the pinked-out paper which covered the shelves.

“She don’t teach us nuffin’: we only plays!” was little Inda’s summing up of the situation; but a moment later she would repeat a dialogue which had taken place between the rival factions during the morning, reproducing, with the wonderful imitative faculty of children, the very accent and gesture with which it had been delivered, and her parents would look at each other with delighted appreciation.

Mamzelle Paddy was a grand institution, and being generously disposed people, Mr and Mrs Wallace endeavoured to show their gratitude by including her in the many amusements which were arranged for the children’s benefit. She accompanied them on sight-seeing expeditions, organised games at evening parties, and on one memorable occasion paid a visit to the circus. Pixie had always cherished a passion for clowns, and when in Paris had appreciated nothing more than an evening at the “Nouveau Cirque,” where Auguste the Frenchman played a secondary part to his English brother, and the performance concluded with a play in which the British tourist played a large part, conspicuous in plaid suits, sailor hats, and thick-soled shoes. She was all eagerness to see the London circus, and nearly as much excited as her pupils, as they drove up to the door, and took their seats on the red velvet chairs.

Inda sat by her mother and stared solemnly around, but Viva insisted upon being next her dear Mamzelle, and pranced up and down in a manner which augured ill for future comfort. Once she began to fidget, adieu to all hope of peace for her companions. Once she began to ask questions, it was safe to predict that she would go on until despair seized those who were obliged to answer. Pixie recognised signs of the coming attack, and managed an adroit change of places which would leave Mrs Wallace free to enjoy the afternoon, and punctually at three o’clock the performance began.

The ring-master walked in and cracked his whip; the clown tumbled head over heels into the arena, and cried, “Here we are again!” the lady rider jumped through paper hoops, and blew kisses to the audience. Viva’s cheeks grew a vivid pink, and at each change in the performance she adopted a change of position. When the hook of her jacket had been extricated from the hair of the lady in front, she perched herself on the arm of her own chair; when she had applauded herself backward into Pixie’s arms, she leant against the supercilious-looking gentleman in the next seat, and tickled his cheeks with her fluffy hair. Then the first wonder wore away, and she found her tongue.

“Why does the clown look like that?”

“It’s a way they have in the family. They always have those funny eyes, and red and white faces.”

“Did he always look like that?”

“He did—all the time he has been a clown.”

“Is it the same clown that was here before?”

“It says on the paper it’s a new one for the occasion.”

“Then why does he say he is here again?”

“I’ll ask him next time we meet! Hush now, and listen to what he is saying. See how they are all laughing!”

“Does the clown sleep in the circus?”

“’Deed he does not, poor creature! There are no beds, and the seats are too hard.”

“Where does he sleep, then? What is his true home?”

“Number Seven, Poplar Gardens, corner of Phillamore Park—the corner house with the red curtains!”

Pixie understood her pupil’s love of detail by this time, and Viva put her head on one side and stared at her with gratified admiration. If she had asked her mother, she would have looked tired and sighed, and said, “My dear child! how shouldIknow? Don’t ask ridiculous questions,” but Mamzelle Paddy knew better than that.

Her face assumed an expression of radiant satisfaction as she pondered on that house in Poplar Gardens. Big and grey, with flower boxes in the windows and little clowns looking out of the nursery windows. Delightful! She was silent for several minutes, and the supercilious gentleman took advantage of the pause to examine the party with curious eyes. The elegant-looking woman was plainly the mother of the little girls, but who was this, who was scarcely more than a child herself, who was addressed as “Mamzelle” and spoke with a strong Irish accent? He stared at her, and Viva discovering his glance turned round with her back to the ring, and stared back with leisurely enjoyment.

At first her face expressed nothing but curiosity, but gradually her features became twisted, the lips down drawn, the eyebrows elevated to an unnatural height, until the beholder realised with horror that she was experimenting on his own expression, and endeavouring to copy it on her own small visage. Many a long year had passed since he had known what it meant to blush, but he blushed then, and hitched round in his seat to hide his scarlet face from view, while Viva once more turned her attention to the ring.

The white-skirted lady had disappeared and another was cantering round, clad in a riding habit and gentleman’s hat. The horse was black, and shone like satin; he pawed the ground with dainty, cat-like tread; the ring-master followed him as he went, and cracked his whip in encouraging fashion. Viva planted one foot on Pixie’s toe, and jumped up and down to attract attention.

“Is the gentleman really angry, that he cracks his whip? Does he pitend to be angry? If he pitends to be angry, why do all the others pitend that they think he doesn’t pitend, but only,—Why does the gentleman crack his whip?”

“Maybe he hears you talking! I saw him cast his eye upon you,” replied Pixie sagely, and the supercilious gentleman pointed the sentence with a sigh, and privately resolved to remove his seat at the first opportunity.

The threat of the whip, however, had the effect of quietening Miss Viva for a good two minutes, and in the meantime Fate sent an unexpected deliverance. Certain portions of the auditorium were portioned off into squares, which did duty for private boxes, and into the nearest of these there now entered a party of ladies and children, in whom he recognised some intimate friends. To advance towards them and beg the use of a vacant chair was the work of a moment, when he proceeded to pour the story of his woes into the ear of the young lady by his side. She was fair and pretty, charmingly dressed, and almost as supercilious in expression as he was himself.

“Little wretch! How impossible of her!” she ejaculated, and bent forward to examine the wretch forthwith.

Viva had climbed on the empty seat, and was craning her little face to right and left to discover where the deserter had fled. With her great blue eyes and rose-leaf complexion set in a frame of golden hair, she looked like an angel from heaven, or one of the sweet-faced cherubs who float in space at the top of Christmas cards and valentines.

But it was not on Viva that the young lady’s attention was riveted, but upon the figure by her side—Mamzelle Paddy in all the glory of a French hat, wearing the very biggest hair-ribbon in her possession, in honour of the occasion. At sight of the profile the young lady started and cried, “It is! It must be!” Then she dodged backwards, saw the hat, and became filled with doubt. “No, it can’t be! It’s much too smart!”

Finally Pixie turned round to apostrophise Miss Viva, who was in the act of striding the back of her chair, and immediately a flash of recognition leapt from eye to eye. The French hat nodded until the feathers fairly quivered with the strain, and the face beneath became a beam of delight, in which eyes disappeared and the parted lips stretched back to a surprising distance. The fair-haired young lady had more respect to appearance in her recognition, but all the same she grew quite pink with pleasure, and cried eagerly—

“It’s my dearest friend! We were at school together, but she has been in Paris finishing her education, and I have not heard from her since her return. I must speak to her in the interval—I really must! You can’t think what a fascinating little creature she is when you get to know her.”

“Ah, really! She looks distinctly—er—out of the common,” drawled the supercilious man lazily. “Rather interesting-looking woman, the children’s mother. Some relation of your friend, I suppose?”

“Oh, I suppose so! The O’Shaughnessys are a very good family. Very well connected. Beautiful old place in Ireland,” drawled the young lady in her turn, and in the intervals of the performance she proceeded to expatiate on the grandeur of the O’Shaughnessy family, the beauty of Esmeralda, and the riches of her husband, until her companion looked forward with increased interest to the coming introduction.

At the first interval Pixie came forward in response to eager beckonings, and stood leaning against the side of the box talking to her friend, with superb disregard of the more extended audience.

“Fancy, now, the two of us meeting without knowing that we were here! You look quite old, Lottie, with your hair done up. Turn your head and let me see the back! D’you still curl it with slate-pencils, like you did at school? I came home at Christmas, and I’ve thought of writing ever since, but I’ve been too busy. I suppose you’re busy too, now you are grown-up and living at home. Have you come out, and gone to dances in low necks? We had an old servant at Knock, and one day a friend came to lunch and she says to Bridgie, ‘That’s a fine, handsome young lady!’ ‘She is,’ says Bridgie. ‘She’s just come out!’ ‘Out of w’ere?’ says Molly, staring.”

Pixie darted a quick glance round the box to enjoy the general appreciation of her joke, then gave a low chuckle of satisfaction. “Ye’ll never guess what I’m doing!”

“No,” said Lottie Vane complacently. She too had noticed the smiles of the audience, and was anxious to encourage her friend in her reminiscences. In society people were always grateful for being amused, and if in her recital Pixie let fall further references to the standing and importance of her family, why, so much the better for all concerned.

“What mischief are you up to now, you funny little thing?”

“I’m in service!” said Pixie proudly.

The shocked amaze of Lottie’s expression, the involuntary rustle of surprise which went round the box, were as so many tributes to the thrilling nature of the intelligence, and she waited a moment to enjoy it before pointing unabashed in the direction of the two children, and condescending to further explanations.

“Me pupils! I’ve been with them now for over a month.”

“What do you mean? How absurd you are, Pixie!” cried Lottie irritably. “In service—you! I never heard such nonsense. As if you were a servant! I don’t know what you are talking about!”

“I get wages, anyhow, and that’s all I care about. They are my pupils, I tell you, and I’ve brought them here with their mother for a little diversion. I’ve the training of them every morning for a couple of hours, and thirty pounds a year paid every month. Jack and I make enough between us to support the family.”

“You don’t really mean it?” gasped Lottie, horrified. Her cheeks were scarlet, and it was evident that she was profoundly uncomfortable, but as she met the triumphant eyes her face softened, and she made a valiant effort to retain composure. “You mean to say you have turned into a governess at sixteen—you who were always at the bottom of the class, and couldn’t get a sum right to save your life! Poor little girls, I pity their education! How did you ever persuade the mother to take you?”

Mamzelle Paddy tossed her head with complacent pride.

“’Deed, me dear, the room was packed with them, and natives at that, and she chose me before the whole bunch. I’m not supposed to teach them anything but French, and I don’t teach that except by playing games. But I keep them from crying and quarrelling, and ye don’t need to be head of your class for that! ’Twasn’t cleverness she took me for, as she told me plainly the first day I went; ’twas m’influence!”

A smothered laugh went round the box at the sound of this curious compound word, uttered in tones of complacent pride; but Lottie Vane did not laugh, and her hand stretched out involuntarily and clasped the little fingers which lay on the side of the box. Her face lost its supercilious expression, and grew sweet and womanly.

“Dear little Pixie,” she said softly, “I don’t pity the pupils after all. I think they are very well off. May I come over and be introduced to them and their mother? She must be a very wise woman.”

The two girls walked forward together towards the spot where Mrs Wallace was sitting, and the supercilious man looked after them with thoughtful eyes. He had always admired Miss Lottie Vane, though he had privately sneered at her snobbish tendencies, but it occurred to him to-day that he had been over-hasty in judgment. How sweet she had looked as she answered her little friend, how kindly had been the tones of her voice! He felt his heart thrill with the beginning of a new and deeper interest.

Back to IndexNext