CHAPTER XXXIThese came a morning when Miss Kezia breakfasted in angry state, alone. At eight o'clock she sat down, as usual, to the table. With down-drawn lip she filled the five cups with coffee, then started on her porridge. Every now and then her eye glanced at the four bowls of porridge with their rapidly lessening issue of steam. From overhead there came, at intervals, the banging of a door, the rush of footsteps from one room to another, a burst of laughter now and then. Miss Kezia went on with her breakfast. Once Sarah knocked timidly, and, with a scared face, dared the whispered suggestion that she should take the porridge "to keep it hot." Her courage failed before ever Miss Kezia's grim lips had begun to frame an answer, and she fled back to the refuge of the kitchen.From above came Denis's voice, jubilant, a musical shout of joy."'Miss Judy O'Connor, she lived forninst meAnd tinder words to her I wrote—'"I say, Nell, did I leave my towels in your room?"Down came Miss Kezia's upper lip.From above:—"A stud is an animate article, possessing the human attributes of legs and devilment—got him, by Jove! Now thin ye young devil, is it hidin' from me, indeed! I'll be teachin' ye a lesson—""Denis,haveyou seen my hair-ribbon?""Oh," this was Nell's voice, "I wish I had a tail like a kitten, to run round and round after!"Miss Kezia's expression grew painfully long-suffering."If you were havin' a tail in this London, there wouldn't be room to run round after it!" Scorn vibrated in this voice.A pause.Thud—thud—patter— Then, with a startling suddenness, a wild Irish whoop.Miss Kezia jumped badly, and the angry, shamed colour flooded her cheeks. She rose—a quick succession of whoops sounded nearer and nearer—she went out into the hall. Denis was coming downstairs, two at a time, and performing an Irish jig at the same moment. The others were behind him."May I request that you cease making those horrible noises? I do not want the police here, thinking murder is being committed."Unfortunately this struck their perverse minds as being intensely funny.Miss Kezia went back to the dining room, and they followed her to cold coffee and congealed porridge. But coffee as cold as the ice round the North pole, and porridge as congealed as lead, were powerless, as Miss Kezia's disapproval was powerless, to quench the hilarity in the atmosphere that morning."May I inquire why you have chosen to be three-quarters of an hour late this morning?"Heads were lifted from bowls of congealed porridge; laughter rippled round the table."'Twasn't we chose—it was the letters," Nell said, and her voice was almost a song, so gay was the lilt of it.Denis said blandly, "Put the blame on the postman, and the cap will fit him like a glove."Nell volunteered sweetly:—"They're letters from Melbourne, Aunt Kezia! Mother is quite well and strong—quite brown and well and strong!""I am glad to hear it, but surely you could have read them after breakfast."The gaiety was quenched momentarily by the sheer force of the surprise that invaded them. Silence reigned, while their thoughts worked rapidly over the waiting of the last months—the impatient suspense of the last days, as the time drew near the date on which they had calculated they could get their first Australian mail. Nell eyed Miss Kezia with a hint of soberness in her face.Tucking Denis into his coat a little later, she said, "I pity her.""Who? Our austere relative?"She nodded; then tapped her brow and her left side suggestively."There must be something wanting somewhere.""A good deal," laughed he, amused.On the door-step he paused, turned, and made a comical grimace."Figures on a day like this! Don't start pitying me, too, or I'll never go!"He was out of the gate.At lunch time he observed to Nell:—"Suppose I get the sack?""I could almost wish it, twin."He laughed."Never did man be burdened with such a degenerate twin! Well, old Tellbridge wants to speak to me this afternoon! In the manager's room, Nell!""A rise!" she ejaculated."Or a fall! I was showing the chaps how to play handball. We'd cleared the room a bit. Tellbridge came in. Lord, he did swell! I thought it was a good thing we'd cleared the room. He asked a few questions—with bland edges to them—and he wants to see me at half-past two in his room.""Oh, Denis, suppose—""A wrinkled brow to-day, Nell!" he laughed. "I refuse to suppose," he observed gaily. "Even in my very innermost recesses, I don't suppose. I'm horribly hungry. Let's see, there's no mutton from yesterday to be eaten up, is there?"She flung her arms wide."My innermost recesses are not supposing now!"When he came back that afternoon he brought Ted Lancaster, and both were laden with parcels."Celebration parcels, Nell!"Ted said, "I say," and wrung her hand hard."Denis! Well?""What? Oh, my interview with old Pom-Pom. My dear, I made a plain statement of the facts of the case, and he actually smiled! Here endeth the—er—thirdinterview!"Molly came in and poked about amongst the parcels."I do wish Aunt Kezia were going out to-night."Denis pretended to feel faint."You, Molly? You, the patent softener of a relative's hard heart?"Molly blushed and glanced abashed at Ted's amused face."Well, for her own sake, anyway," she protested, and dropped her eyes with a giggle over her hypocrisy."Ted," Nell said, "here's a penny.""Thanks awfully."He took it and dropped it into his pocket."It may come in useful some day. One never knows.""Well?" she said."Well what?""You don't think I'd give you a penny for nothing! It's for your thoughts."He gave her a quick little glance."Oh, my thoughts! And I hoped it was pure disinterested benevolence!""Tell me your thoughts! I'm sure you were thinking of something nice for us—"He interrupted flurriedly."Something nice? I—I— What made you think that? I wasn't! I really—""You looked sort of kind," she said, laughing."Well, I wasn't!""Give me back my penny!" He handed it back with an absent-minded air.Protests were sent and brought up to the Stronghold that evening. An abashed and blushing Sarah brought them, and an austere and angry Miss Kezia sent them.Sheila Pat marched downstairs, and knocked at Herr Schmidt's door."Kom in!"Sheila Pat went in. Her eyes were very bright, her pig-tail was very crooked."Herr Schmidt," she said, "please will you walk out with Aunt Kezia?"Herr Schmidt's big face grew redder than its usual red wont. It chanced that he understood the meaning of "walking out.""Ach!" he ejaculated.Sheila Pat eyed him severely."Sarah says if you're walking out with a young man you must always go when he asks you to," she explained. Her voice rose, "Oh, Herr Schmidt, you couldalwaysask Aunt Kezia when we want to get rid of her, and," impishly she glowed, "she could never say no!""I'm sorry—" he began.She urged strenuously. "She's very worthy! She gives all her old clothes to charity. And Sarah says she's very just, and she'd make your wages go a very long way. Sarah says that's a great thing."He began to chuckle, but checked it in his distress at having to disappoint her. She came down at last to a humble, "Well, will you please just take her for a walknow?"She returned, chastened and severe, to the Stronghold. A visit a few minutes later, from Miss Kezia herself, lent an added intensity to the small figure that flung itself desperately at Mr. Mark Yovil, who called to leave some book for Denis."Take her away! Walk out with her! She's a wet counterpane on us!"Mark Yovil, known for his obstinacy, his firm will, was weak where this Atom was concerned."I'm going to a lecture," he declared hesitatingly."Take her!""But, my dear, it's nothing that would interest her. She would not come—""Oh,please! 'Magine us—up there—all quiet and still like dead mice! And our letter-day! It—it's really very sad!"He looked down into her upturned face, into the wild entreaty of her great eyes.Miss Kezia came into the hall and greeted him, surprised.He turned to her, and asked her if she would be so very kind—his sister had lost her cook quite suddenly—not very experienced—advice—Miss Kezia presently had gone upstairs to don her bonnet, her one weakness, love of giving advice, enveloping her in a cloud of complacency."Now, small Sheila Pat, am I not a true friend? But, mark this, I have told no falsehoods." He took her on his knee. "My sister has lost her cook. She is inexperienced. She does want advice," he twinkled there; "I don't know that it's the advice of your estimable aunt that she particularly requires, but we'll hope so. Your aunt once whacked my sister's baby on the back when it had swallowed a spoon or fork or knife or something of the kind. Perhaps it was the soup-tureen. Well, now, I shall have to leave your aunt in one room while I explain to my sister. You'll have to love me for ever for this, Sheila Pat."A little later, and noise echoed with joyful abandon through the house.When Ted bade them good night, he said hesitatingly:—"I say, Nell—er—""Say on!" she encouraged him."You don't think—I mean—well, you won't get thinking—er—will you?""Oh, Ted, why? Have you noticed any grey hairs yet?" She put up her hands to her hair.He smiled."I mean—you know—""By Jove, if she does know, they didn't divide the supply of brains between us equally," Denis observed."I only mean that I don't want you to—to get thinking that—you know you said before that I looked as if I were thinking of something nice for you—well, you won't think I was, will you?""Oh, indeed, I will now! Denis, can't you see there's a secret somewhere? Oh, how lovely! Ted, I do love secrets. Is it somethingverynice?"He looked into her teasing face with an expression of almost ludicrous dismay."I—wish you wouldn't!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped laughing."Well, I won't!" she said. "I'm quite sure there's nothing nice going to happen anywhere or any time, and it'll be all the more a surprise, won't it? Oh, Ted, I didn't mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was all fun, all smoke—""'There's no smoke without a fire,'" Denis told the ceiling."Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined.Ted still looked worried. His good nights were absent. When he had gone, Nell observed thoughtfully:—"I wonder what it is! Oh, I hope we won't have to wait long!"CHAPTER XXXIIDown the stairs flew Nell, out into the street, up to a banana barrow, a boy, and a puppy."Could you lend him to me for a while?"The boy eyed her suspiciously. There was not much ground for suspicion, since it was hardly likely she could be contemplating theft; the puppy, though fascinating, was obviously incapable of proclaiming what breed he was intended by nature to represent. Moreover Nell, in a long pinafore and hatless, could scarcely run away with him. It was merely from force of habit that the boy eyed her suspiciously. The puppy was more discerning. He welcomed her as a long and ardently looked for friend; he turned ecstatic somersaults over her feet; then stood up, and tore at her pinafore with wild, soft little paws. She picked him up."May I have him? I want to paint him."The owner of the bananas, for whom the boy and the puppy were waiting, reappeared. He was quite a gallant gentleman, and assured Nell he would be pleased to let her have the puppy for "ahour, miss," he said with a good deal of effect. "And in ahour I shall be back this way, and will fetch 'im if convenient."Nell smuggled the puppy into the house and up to the Stronghold beneath her pinafore.He started thehour by persisting in looking upon Kate Kearney as a butt, provided by Providence, for his especial benefit. He thought her a tremendously funny joke and the more K.K. aired her dignity, the funnier he thought her. He rolled over in uncontrollable mirth, kicking up impertinent little legs right beneath her nose; he turned somersaults over her staid body; he frisked up to her in ridiculous boxing attitudes; he slapped her face, and he jeeringly incited her over and over again to "come on."But K.K. refused to "come on." She was furiously jealous of the unaristocratic little mongrel who had suddenly invaded her precincts. She took refuge in a hurt dignity; she turned her head away at his approach with an unmistakable suggestion. The puppy was not hurt; he had, together with his dirt and his plebeian origin, a useful thick-skinned philosophy.K.K. retired to a corner, back to audience, and Nell tried to sketch the puppy. When held by Molly, he howled so pathetically that he procured his release, which was exactly what he meant to do. Thereupon he licked all available hands and waddled back to Kate Kearney. As interludes to his worrying of her, he tugged a great hole into the table-cloth and upset Nell's paint-water; he managed to get a pencil stuck into his mouth, and screamed with terror; he, perhaps, after all, and in spite of his plebeian philosophy, somewhat affected by K.K.'s suggestively averted nose, essayed a bath in her drinking-pan. He upset the pan, and his own feelings; dripping and whimpering at the shock of the water, he ran round the room, and chose a wet oil-painting of Nell's against which to dry himself. The result was bad for the painting, and for the puppy, too. Adorned with patches of green and blue, he waxed pathetic, sat down with a disconcerting suddenness, and put his head on one side.Nell exclaimed, "I can't give him back like that!" and had resort to turpentine.All the puppy's instincts arose and defied her. He wriggled and kicked and howled, and in the midst of it Sheila Pat appeared with Jim on her arm, and the information that Aunt Kezia had returned home. The puppy was released. The Atom put Jim down, and ran to him delightedly. But a change had come o'er the puppy. On the floor Jim O'Driscoll sat, lazily picking the shell from a nut. He took no notice of the puppy; his air of complete indifference was positively insulting. The puppy stood for a minute, petrified, then he pranced a little closer, and waited. Jim scratched his left ear and ruminated. The puppy barked. Jim scratched his right ear and ruminated further. The puppy made a nervous dash at him, and fled with his tail between his legs. Jim drew in the foot that the puppy had touched and went on shelling his nut. There was a pause, then the puppy approached within a yard of the blasé little figure on the floor and barked. They tried to stop him, but that puppy refused to be stopped; he had a good deal to say, and he meant to say it. That the object of the rude things he was saying gave not the slightest heed to him merely aggravated his eloquence to a louder pitch.Molly thrust her head round the door. "Aunt Kezia is coming!"Nell seized the puppy and poked him into the bottom shelf of the cupboard. Sheila Pat dropped Jim's cage behind the sofa, picked Jim up, poked him into it, tried to fasten the door, and Miss Kezia entered the room. There was a dead silence while she gazed about and took in every detail of disorder down to a dropped match."Ow—yow—yow—yo—o—ow!"A long and distressful wail arose from the cupboard.Now it happened that Kate Kearney had so far foregone her dignity as to approach the cupboard to dab at it with a triumphant and insulting paw."There it is again!" Miss Kezia was wrathful, but there was also an anxious glint in her eye. "What is the matter with the dog? Is it ill?"Nell, fascinatedly watching the putting forth of a stealthy brown arm from beneath the sofa, in the direction of Sheila Pat's shoe buttons, responded with an irrepressible little laugh."I don't see anything to laugh at, Eileen! I am afraid you are very foolish and frivolous for your age.""Ow—yow—yow—yo—o—o—oo—ow!"The final "ow" was a veritable triumph of hideous nerve shattering. Miss Kezia's voice rose angrily: "I believe it is going mad! Or has distemper! I was foolish ever to allow it in my house! I hate dogs! It will have to be sent away if it's ill!"The brown paw had reached and seized a shoe button. Sheila Pat was kicking frantically. The paw darted back."Oh, no—he—she isn't ill, Aunt Kezia—she's quite well—she's been mad—I mean, had distemper, already—oh, I—I think I'm rather m-muddley this morning—""I hope you're not hysterical, Eileen! You are really astonishingly foolish! As for the dog—"K.K. had turned; her head was now facing Miss Kezia. Nell recognised the fact that the next howl could not, even by Miss Kezia, be put down to her. For a moment she thought of hustling her aunt from the room; but the detection of the puppy merely meant anger, punishment, a letter to Australia. They could face that, and Jim's arm had disappeared. They could not put up with his banishment.There was a sudden and portentous silence in the cupboard.Miss Kezia had a few more remarks to make. She made them. Once she deviated from the main theme of noise and general untidiness, lured by a rustle in the cupboard, on to mice. She declared that the kitchen was overrun by mice, and all because they had wantonly bought and let loose three in her house. She was going to buy new traps, as something had evidently gone wrong with the springs of hers. Twice she had found the cheese gone and the mouse, too!Sheila Pat sat and gazed down thoughtfully at the forefinger of her right hand; a small smile flickered at the corners of her lips. The finger was rough and red. She wondered would it be possible to grease the lock of the kitchen door. It was not the pain she minded so much as the risk attached to the noise the slow turning of a stiff key makes at four or five o'clock in the morning. At the moment of her musing a determined little hand seized again on her shoe; fingers picked at a button. Sheila Pat kicked. Now, as a rule, Jim O'Driscoll was easily cowed—easily induced to retire. A frowning shake of the head had hitherto been sufficient to keep him still, in an attitude of petrified thought, for several minutes at a time. Apparently a backward kick, gentle because Sheila Pat could not, even for his own welfare bring herself to make it otherwise, had lost its power of petrification; anyhow Jim refused to abandon his tenacious hold upon her shoe button. Sheila Pat wriggled her foot out of the shoe; it disappeared immediately. Meanwhile Miss Kezia talked. She had never considered herself, or been considered by others, a talkative woman. When she left the Stronghold, there were worried lines about her face; she moved her lips in an irritated manner. It was irksome to her to be obliged to talk so much; it outraged Nature, and added to the irritation consequent on the O'Briens' misdemeanours. But she considered it her duty to talk, so she did it. And no one was grateful.Sheila Pat rescued her button from Jim's cheek, and Nell opened the cupboard. The puppy certainly looked very charming. He lay in a nest of oats, biscuits, ink, and torn paper; a long paint-brush stuck rakishly out of the corner of his mouth. It was perhaps his expression that was so particularly charming. He had feasted on biscuits; he had tasted the flavours of oats, ink, and paper. He had had a meal to his taste, and now he was sleepy. He looked up at Nell a little mischievously and palpably with a supreme content with life. He was sleepy, and willing to be petted. That he was adorned still with patches of paint to which he had added smears of ink in no way detracted from his adorableness.Nell said, "Oh, you bad puppy!"She picked him up and hugged him.CHAPTER XXXIIINell, carrying Jim O'Driscoll upstairs beneath her pinafore, nearly fell down at the sudden loud rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat that echoed through the house.Sarah came running to open the door. They peeped over the balusters; Ted dashed in, up the stairs, and into them."You seem to be in a hurry," Denis suggested."Er—no—"He stood silent."Police after you, old man? We'll hide you. Get into Jim's cage, and they won't know the difference!"Nell was looking at Ted.She said quietly, "What is it, Ted?""Oh—coming out? Nice day—"A snort came from the direction of the Atom's bedroom:"Only fog so thick that a person can't see an inch in front of her! And whichever way you look, you see nothing but mud and mud! But sure 'tis a nice day for London!"Nell's eyes had met Ted's; she understood."Molly, go and put on your things. I'll get ready in a minute."She led the way into the Stronghold. She turned and faced him."What is it?"But he had grown suddenly uncomfortable."I hope you won't think—er—that I've been meddling," he said, with the slight drawl Nell understood so well now."Never!" she said. "Go on.""Well, you might. O.B. told me about those Rêve d'or shares—" He paused.Denis nodded.Nell put her hand out suddenly, and rested it heavily on the table."What about them?" she said.Ted spoke quickly, giving the heart of what he had to say."The governor says—'Hold on—don't sell.'"There was a little pause. Nell's face had gone quite white."He—means?" she said.Ted glanced at her, and away again."It may mean nothing—of course, you can't always tell—""No, no! We know that," Denis broke in impatiently. "What made your father say it?""He's out there, you know—South Africa. He's got no end of a head. And he's a shareholder. I asked him about them in a letter some time ago. He wrote last week saying he believed they weren't as bad as he'd thought, but he couldn't be sure yet—""That was the night our Australian letters had come," Nell said.He nodded."Just now I got a cablegram—saying, 'Hold on, don't sell.'"He paused."He may be making a mistake," he said slowly. "The shares may not go up—don't reckon on it—" He stopped."We—we can't help it, Ted," Nell said shakily."No."He walked over to the window and looked out. There was a little silence. Then suddenly she laughed out, an excited, wild little laugh."Oh, Iknowit's true! Iknowit is! We shall go home—Denis, don't youfeelit? Ted, it's all you—all you, Teddie! You'll come with us. You'll climb the hills with us—you'll love our home—" Her voice broke.Ted grew very red; he turned his back on her, and spoke, in a tone of elaborate unconcern, to Denis."Thought you might come round to Bumpus's, old man, with me, about that book—""Oh, hang Bumpus! Hang the book!" Denis interpolated.Nell's charming face, laughing, was poked suddenly close to Ted's."I'm not going to cry, Teddie! D'you think I'd repay you like that? And I won't even try to thank you—""Nothing to thank me for," he interposed."Oh, no, it's nothing to hear that we're going back to Kilbrannan soon," observed Denis."Don't be such a fool, O.B.!" Ted turned on him angrily. "You're not a baby! I tell you, those shares may never pay another dividend!""Oh, Teddie!"The woeful change in her face made him add weakly:—"But I've never known the Pater to make a mistake over that sort of thing—""Oh,Teddie!"She was radiant again. She started talking; her voice was breathless, almost a song of joy.Ted said heavily, "It's an awful responsibility."She stopped in the middle of a laugh."Anyway—in any case—" she said, "you—oh, how good you are, Ted!""Good Heavens!" he ejaculated. "Why don't you put me up on a pedestal and worship me?"He spoke with strong irritation."Oh, how rude you are! You English are queer! Denis can do with any amount of gratitude.""Well, I'm not Denis," he grumped. "Your father's not likely to sell out, is he?""No, no one'd buy the shares, you know," Denis replied confidently.But Ted had inherited somewhat of his father's business faculty."Don't be an ass, O.B.!" he ejaculated. "Some chap might scent that they're likely to go up, and offer to buy them of your governor.""Oh, Denis, and dad would sell them fornothing!" Nell cried. "Oh, what shall we do? He'd never suspect—he thinks they're worth nothing. Ted, tell us what to do!""We must cable to him," Denis put in. "Where's my hat? I'm off!""Oh, do wait for me. Do let me come, too!"She fled into her bedroom. She dragged out a coat. Sheila Pat was folding up her nightgown."Are you goin' out?" she demanded."Yes. Find me a hat, there's a sweet."Sheila Pat crawled under the bed, and dived into a hatbox."Where are you goin'? I'll come, too."Nell dissembled badly."Oh, we—we're only going just out—for a little while. Give me a hat, Atom."Sheila Pat handed it to her in silence; she studied Nell's superlatively guilty face with calm disapproval."Why don't you own up that you're doin' somethin' secret?" she queried disdainfully."Oh, don't be silly, Atom! Oh, whywon'tmy hat go on?""I'm comin' too," Sheila Pat said, and she smiled a little triumphant smile."Oh!" said Nell.Sheila Pat went to the wardrobe, and lifted down her coat. Nell kicked one of her boots beneath the chest of drawers."I can see what you're doin'," said Sheila Pat, calmly.Nell began to laugh."You can come if you're ready to start when we are, but we won't wait," she said, and ran out of the room.A cold little voice pursued her."I was only pertendin'; I never intrude where I'm not wanted."Nell hardened her heart. She burst into the Stronghold."Do come! Oh, every moment's precious!"As they went downstairs Denis said, "Lancaster's been pointing out that of course we may be advising the Pater quite wrong—""How, Denis? Oh,how?" She wrinkled her brows anxiously."The shares mayn't go up, you see.""Oh, that!" she cried relieved. "Yes, I know.""But, by telling him to hold on, we should stop his selling if he got a chance and if they don't go up—oh, you see, don't you?"She nodded.They let themselves out into the street in silence."I wanted you to understand," Denis said."Yes."She looked down abstractedly at her thin house-slippers, which she had forgotten to change."I want to send the cablegram," she said. "I want to take the risk.""That's all right. So do I.""It's four and tenpence a word to Melbourne," observed Ted, prosaically. "What shall you say?""'Hold on to Rêve d'or shares,' I think," Denis said."'Don't sell' would be a word less," Nell suggested. "'Do not,'" Ted amended. "You mustn't put 'don't' in a telegram."'"Hold on to' is more emphatic," Denis opined.On the way back Nell said hesitatingly:—"Denis, do you think it'll frighten them dreadfully to get a cablegram from us?""Only for a second, and it can't be helped, worse luck!""We won't tell Molly or the Atom, will we?""No. We'll wait. It would drive the Atom mad to wait.""Yes." She looked as if she thought it might drive her mad, too.When she and Denis were alone in the Stronghold that night, she observed elatedly, and with considerable confidence, "And we'll be able to manage so beautifully, because we've had such practice in economising lately."He nodded."We'll live on potatoes, old girl! I must say I prefer to economise on praties rather than on porridge.""I've been thinking it all out. We'll have to be very careful, of course, but what does it matter—what does it matter? I'll sweep and clean and groom the horses! I'll have one dress a year—oh, Denis! Denis! I'm all in a wuzzle. I'm so happy that—""Let's go out! Come along. I shall burst if I don't.""We'll find a quiet square andrun!" she cried.It was ten o'clock. At eleven o'clock they remembered that they would be locked out. They returned and threw small stones at Herr Schmidt's window. He let them in."Ach," he exclaimed, looking at Nell, "you make my dry heart glad!"CHAPTER XXXIVMiss Kezia entered the dining room.Molly, hastily and with a very red face, slipped the sheet of paper on which she had been writing beneath the blotting paper. She looked up, and the giggle that had started to her lips died away."Oh! Oh, can I do anything for you, Aunt Kezia?" She jumped up and kicked over her chair.Miss Kezia replied stiffly that she required nothing from her. She looked at her thoughtfully."I suppose it was you who put my everyday bonnet into the wrong box?" she queried."I—oh, was it the wrong box? I—I'm very sorry—""And it was you who sewed a black button on my glove, while the others are white, I suppose?""I didn't think it would matter—""And may I ask where you have hidden my keys?""I—I haven't touched them!" Eagerly she seized on the small bit of relief. "I haven't seen them.""You surprise me!" Miss Kezia said, with a strong inflexion of sarcasm in her tone. "Hadn't you better pick up that chair?"Molly stooped and set it erect; she blinked back tears.Miss Kezia said: "You are a very peculiar girl, Molly. I should be obliged if you would leave my things alone. You puzzle me, but I understand that you mean well."Molly's downcast face lightened. Impulsively she burst out, "Oh, thank you, aunt—auntie!""I," said Miss Kezia, "object to pet names!"She walked from the room, leaving a scarlet and abashed niece behind her.She went into Herr Schmidt's room to see that Sarah had dusted it thoroughly. She found Sheila Pat sitting at the table, with paper, pens, and ink of Herr Schmidt's before her."What are you doing in here, Sheila?""Writin' a private letter," said Sheila Pat."Take it up into your room! You have no business in here at all.""Has," said Sheila Pat, in very judicial tones, "has Herr Schmidt ever told you that you're like a little sunbeam in his room, and just as welcome?"Miss Kezia seemed a little disconcerted."N-no," she said."Then you'd better go," the Atom observed. "He's said that to me."She bent over her writing.Miss Kezia came closer."Please," said Sheila Pat, "don't read what I'm writin'. It's very private.""May I ask," said Miss Kezia, "if Herr Schmidt has also given you permission to use his writing materials and paper?""He hasn't given mepermission," said Sheila Pat; "he asked me to do him thehonourof placin' them at my disposal."It sounded very grand. Miss Kezia left the room.She went upstairs to the Stronghold to speak to Nell. Nell was seated at the table, writing. She started up guiltily as Miss Kezia entered the room."You all appear to be very busy writing this morning," Miss Kezia said crossly.For some reason or other this seemed to amuse Nell considerably. She began to laugh."Oh, are they writing, too? I wonder—" She broke off, and went on laughing."Eileen, I am constantly obliged to chide you for your frivolity. You laugh at nothing; or, at least, I can see no cause for laughter?"There was a pronounced query at the end of her sentence. Nell strove to answer it."Well, you see—you see—we're writing—private letters—at least, I am, and now you say—so I suppose they are, too—you see—oh, I c-c-can't help it, it's s-so f-f-funny!"Miss Kezia gave the message she had come to deliver; she gave it in an austere voice, and with a face of disgust. The she went."Oh, I'm a w-worm!" Nell chuckled, crawling beneath the sofa to speak to James. "But, oh, Jimmy, I feel all mad these days! If—if it comes to nothing—but it won't! it won't! Oh, Jimmy!"The next morning was bright and sunny, with a gladness in the air, a song of spring. It was the first of April, and even in London it was a glorious day."I won't eventhinkthe thought, 'What it would be like at Kilbrannan,'" Nell declared to Denis, when she met him on her way down to breakfast, "because—shan't we soon be there?" She broke out singing:—"'There blooms a bonny flower,Up the heather glen;Tho' bright in sun, in shower'Tis just as bright again.I never can pass by it,I never dar' go nigh it,My heart it won't be quiet,Up the heather glen.Sing O, the blooming heather!O, the heather glen!Where fairest fairies gatherTo lure in mortal men—'"She broke off; she turned to him on the last stair, hung on to his arm."Denis, if only,onlywe might tell them! My hair fairly rises with the weight of the secret! I know Sheila Pat is wondering what has come to us!""Eileen, come in to breakfast!"They went in. On the table there lay a great pile of letters. Molly and the Atom came hurrying in; Denis tossed letters to them all, and kept a few himself."I cannot understand why there are so many letters this morning," Miss Kezia observed. She looked round the table, surprised."Why do you not open them?" she asked."Anticipation is the soul of wit!" observed Denis, absurdly.They fingered their letters, laughing, glancing at each other."Have you all gone mad?" Miss Kezia demanded."That's a good suggestion," Denis opined thoughtfully. "They do look somewhat abbreviated in the top story. As for me, I will open my letters at one minute past twelve, noon."He airily tucked them away in an inner pocket."I request an explanation of these horribly addressed letters!" Miss Kezia cried.The laughter broke out hilariously. Denis stretched out, picked up one of Sheila Pat's letters, and eyed it with pride."I thought that rather good," he observed. "Look at the curly little heads, and those tricky Greeke's!""Molly!" Miss Kezia turned to her with an air of finality, "Molly, willyouvouchsafe me an explanation?"Molly, at once proud and horrified, plunged forthwith:—"Oh, yes, Aunt Kezia, you see, it's April the first, and you're a fool if you don't know it—"She made an unfortunate pause, flustered by a burst of laughter.Miss Kezia's cheek reddened a little."Molly, your language—""Oh, no! Oh, I didn't mean that! I mean that if you don't know it, you get caught, and if you do, you don't, and—and—you see—we wrote letters to each other—we didn't know the others were remembering the date, too, and of course if it had been our own handwriting we'd have known, you see. So we disguised them, and we can't open them before twelve or we'll be fools." She stopped, out of breath.Miss Kezia said slowly:—"Do you mean that you have wasted all those stamps, that paper, those envelopes, on a ridiculous childish game? That you have thrown away honest pennies on such tom-foolery?"She proceeded to deliver a lecture on thrift which lasted throughout breakfast. Just before Denis started for the bank, a telegram came for Nell. Sarah brought it up to the Stronghold. She looked at Nell with scared pity in her face."It's for you, miss!"Nell seized it, tore it open, burst out laughing."I'm caught! It's from Moira McCarthy! Oh, IwishI could catch her!"She crumpled it up and threw it at Denis.Sheila Pat picked it up and studied it."April 1," she read thoughtfully. She smoothed the paper out with a tender little hand, then folded it carefully, carried it to her room, and locked it in the box where she kept such treasures as she had brought to London with her. They were in the hall a little later, Denis had just gone, when there was another loud double knock at the door. Sarah came running, but Nell was before her. She opened the door; a telegraph boy stood on the step. She took the telegram from him. "For you this time, Sheila Pat!"Sheila Pat took it. She looked at it."And 'er so little!" Sarah murmured from the background."Molly," said the Atom, "wouldn't you like to open it?""No, thank you!""I know it's from that Ted!" opined Nell. "Open it, Atom. The boy's waiting to know if there's an answer!"From the dining room issued Miss Kezia."A telegram? And for you, Sheila? Why do you not open it?"Sheila Pat hesitated. Longing to see if it were by any chance another telegram from Ireland, and determination not to let Ted Lancaster catch her, fought within her small bosom."Are you afraid?" Miss Kezia said, coming forward. "I will open it for you."Now at the opening words of her sentence Sheila Pat's head had been uplifted with a disgusted jerk, but as Miss Kezia finished speaking, a sudden impish glow shone in her face, and gravely she held out the orange envelope. Miss Kezia took it. They watched breathlessly. She tore open the envelope, she read what was written on the form inside. A great and triumphant satisfaction illumined the Atom's small features as she watched the expression that overspread her aunt's countenance."It is, I suppose, intended to be witty," Miss Kezia observed at last. "I consider it a vulgar and sinfully wasteful joke. Sheila, did you know what the telegram contained?""I thought it was somethin' like that," the Atom said. "Please give it to me." She turned to Nell. "There can't be two April Fools overonething, can there?"The telegram was long; it was addressed in full to Miss Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien, and it said: "Shure and isn't it afther being the 1st of April then, och begorra, and isn't it meself will be having the laugh of ye entoirely at all at all, for when ye rade this, won't ye be afther being taken in ochone acushla!""That telegram," said Miss Kezia, in awful tones, "cost four shillings and eightpence to send."Nell eyed her admiringly."How quickly you can add up!" she said.A little later Molly stole guiltily away up to her room. She locked the door, and sitting down on her bed began to tear open envelopes. Presently to her through the keyhole came a whisper:—"Molly O'Brien, I hear the rending of note-paper!"Molly jumped; her face grew scarlet."Oh, Nell! I!—I—"Through the keyhole there was a ripple of triumphant laughter. Molly stood, red, and stammering futile excuses, and heard the laughter die away down the passage.
CHAPTER XXXI
These came a morning when Miss Kezia breakfasted in angry state, alone. At eight o'clock she sat down, as usual, to the table. With down-drawn lip she filled the five cups with coffee, then started on her porridge. Every now and then her eye glanced at the four bowls of porridge with their rapidly lessening issue of steam. From overhead there came, at intervals, the banging of a door, the rush of footsteps from one room to another, a burst of laughter now and then. Miss Kezia went on with her breakfast. Once Sarah knocked timidly, and, with a scared face, dared the whispered suggestion that she should take the porridge "to keep it hot." Her courage failed before ever Miss Kezia's grim lips had begun to frame an answer, and she fled back to the refuge of the kitchen.
From above came Denis's voice, jubilant, a musical shout of joy.
"'Miss Judy O'Connor, she lived forninst meAnd tinder words to her I wrote—'
"'Miss Judy O'Connor, she lived forninst meAnd tinder words to her I wrote—'
"'Miss Judy O'Connor, she lived forninst me
And tinder words to her I wrote—'
"I say, Nell, did I leave my towels in your room?"
Down came Miss Kezia's upper lip.
From above:—
"A stud is an animate article, possessing the human attributes of legs and devilment—got him, by Jove! Now thin ye young devil, is it hidin' from me, indeed! I'll be teachin' ye a lesson—"
"Denis,haveyou seen my hair-ribbon?"
"Oh," this was Nell's voice, "I wish I had a tail like a kitten, to run round and round after!"
Miss Kezia's expression grew painfully long-suffering.
"If you were havin' a tail in this London, there wouldn't be room to run round after it!" Scorn vibrated in this voice.
A pause.
Thud—thud—patter— Then, with a startling suddenness, a wild Irish whoop.
Miss Kezia jumped badly, and the angry, shamed colour flooded her cheeks. She rose—a quick succession of whoops sounded nearer and nearer—she went out into the hall. Denis was coming downstairs, two at a time, and performing an Irish jig at the same moment. The others were behind him.
"May I request that you cease making those horrible noises? I do not want the police here, thinking murder is being committed."
Unfortunately this struck their perverse minds as being intensely funny.
Miss Kezia went back to the dining room, and they followed her to cold coffee and congealed porridge. But coffee as cold as the ice round the North pole, and porridge as congealed as lead, were powerless, as Miss Kezia's disapproval was powerless, to quench the hilarity in the atmosphere that morning.
"May I inquire why you have chosen to be three-quarters of an hour late this morning?"
Heads were lifted from bowls of congealed porridge; laughter rippled round the table.
"'Twasn't we chose—it was the letters," Nell said, and her voice was almost a song, so gay was the lilt of it.
Denis said blandly, "Put the blame on the postman, and the cap will fit him like a glove."
Nell volunteered sweetly:—
"They're letters from Melbourne, Aunt Kezia! Mother is quite well and strong—quite brown and well and strong!"
"I am glad to hear it, but surely you could have read them after breakfast."
The gaiety was quenched momentarily by the sheer force of the surprise that invaded them. Silence reigned, while their thoughts worked rapidly over the waiting of the last months—the impatient suspense of the last days, as the time drew near the date on which they had calculated they could get their first Australian mail. Nell eyed Miss Kezia with a hint of soberness in her face.
Tucking Denis into his coat a little later, she said, "I pity her."
"Who? Our austere relative?"
She nodded; then tapped her brow and her left side suggestively.
"There must be something wanting somewhere."
"A good deal," laughed he, amused.
On the door-step he paused, turned, and made a comical grimace.
"Figures on a day like this! Don't start pitying me, too, or I'll never go!"
He was out of the gate.
At lunch time he observed to Nell:—
"Suppose I get the sack?"
"I could almost wish it, twin."
He laughed.
"Never did man be burdened with such a degenerate twin! Well, old Tellbridge wants to speak to me this afternoon! In the manager's room, Nell!"
"A rise!" she ejaculated.
"Or a fall! I was showing the chaps how to play handball. We'd cleared the room a bit. Tellbridge came in. Lord, he did swell! I thought it was a good thing we'd cleared the room. He asked a few questions—with bland edges to them—and he wants to see me at half-past two in his room."
"Oh, Denis, suppose—"
"A wrinkled brow to-day, Nell!" he laughed. "I refuse to suppose," he observed gaily. "Even in my very innermost recesses, I don't suppose. I'm horribly hungry. Let's see, there's no mutton from yesterday to be eaten up, is there?"
She flung her arms wide.
"My innermost recesses are not supposing now!"
When he came back that afternoon he brought Ted Lancaster, and both were laden with parcels.
"Celebration parcels, Nell!"
Ted said, "I say," and wrung her hand hard.
"Denis! Well?"
"What? Oh, my interview with old Pom-Pom. My dear, I made a plain statement of the facts of the case, and he actually smiled! Here endeth the—er—thirdinterview!"
Molly came in and poked about amongst the parcels.
"I do wish Aunt Kezia were going out to-night."
Denis pretended to feel faint.
"You, Molly? You, the patent softener of a relative's hard heart?"
Molly blushed and glanced abashed at Ted's amused face.
"Well, for her own sake, anyway," she protested, and dropped her eyes with a giggle over her hypocrisy.
"Ted," Nell said, "here's a penny."
"Thanks awfully."
He took it and dropped it into his pocket.
"It may come in useful some day. One never knows."
"Well?" she said.
"Well what?"
"You don't think I'd give you a penny for nothing! It's for your thoughts."
He gave her a quick little glance.
"Oh, my thoughts! And I hoped it was pure disinterested benevolence!"
"Tell me your thoughts! I'm sure you were thinking of something nice for us—"
He interrupted flurriedly.
"Something nice? I—I— What made you think that? I wasn't! I really—"
"You looked sort of kind," she said, laughing.
"Well, I wasn't!"
"Give me back my penny!" He handed it back with an absent-minded air.
Protests were sent and brought up to the Stronghold that evening. An abashed and blushing Sarah brought them, and an austere and angry Miss Kezia sent them.
Sheila Pat marched downstairs, and knocked at Herr Schmidt's door.
"Kom in!"
Sheila Pat went in. Her eyes were very bright, her pig-tail was very crooked.
"Herr Schmidt," she said, "please will you walk out with Aunt Kezia?"
Herr Schmidt's big face grew redder than its usual red wont. It chanced that he understood the meaning of "walking out."
"Ach!" he ejaculated.
Sheila Pat eyed him severely.
"Sarah says if you're walking out with a young man you must always go when he asks you to," she explained. Her voice rose, "Oh, Herr Schmidt, you couldalwaysask Aunt Kezia when we want to get rid of her, and," impishly she glowed, "she could never say no!"
"I'm sorry—" he began.
She urged strenuously. "She's very worthy! She gives all her old clothes to charity. And Sarah says she's very just, and she'd make your wages go a very long way. Sarah says that's a great thing."
He began to chuckle, but checked it in his distress at having to disappoint her. She came down at last to a humble, "Well, will you please just take her for a walknow?"
She returned, chastened and severe, to the Stronghold. A visit a few minutes later, from Miss Kezia herself, lent an added intensity to the small figure that flung itself desperately at Mr. Mark Yovil, who called to leave some book for Denis.
"Take her away! Walk out with her! She's a wet counterpane on us!"
Mark Yovil, known for his obstinacy, his firm will, was weak where this Atom was concerned.
"I'm going to a lecture," he declared hesitatingly.
"Take her!"
"But, my dear, it's nothing that would interest her. She would not come—"
"Oh,please! 'Magine us—up there—all quiet and still like dead mice! And our letter-day! It—it's really very sad!"
He looked down into her upturned face, into the wild entreaty of her great eyes.
Miss Kezia came into the hall and greeted him, surprised.
He turned to her, and asked her if she would be so very kind—his sister had lost her cook quite suddenly—not very experienced—advice—
Miss Kezia presently had gone upstairs to don her bonnet, her one weakness, love of giving advice, enveloping her in a cloud of complacency.
"Now, small Sheila Pat, am I not a true friend? But, mark this, I have told no falsehoods." He took her on his knee. "My sister has lost her cook. She is inexperienced. She does want advice," he twinkled there; "I don't know that it's the advice of your estimable aunt that she particularly requires, but we'll hope so. Your aunt once whacked my sister's baby on the back when it had swallowed a spoon or fork or knife or something of the kind. Perhaps it was the soup-tureen. Well, now, I shall have to leave your aunt in one room while I explain to my sister. You'll have to love me for ever for this, Sheila Pat."
A little later, and noise echoed with joyful abandon through the house.
When Ted bade them good night, he said hesitatingly:—
"I say, Nell—er—"
"Say on!" she encouraged him.
"You don't think—I mean—well, you won't get thinking—er—will you?"
"Oh, Ted, why? Have you noticed any grey hairs yet?" She put up her hands to her hair.
He smiled.
"I mean—you know—"
"By Jove, if she does know, they didn't divide the supply of brains between us equally," Denis observed.
"I only mean that I don't want you to—to get thinking that—you know you said before that I looked as if I were thinking of something nice for you—well, you won't think I was, will you?"
"Oh, indeed, I will now! Denis, can't you see there's a secret somewhere? Oh, how lovely! Ted, I do love secrets. Is it somethingverynice?"
He looked into her teasing face with an expression of almost ludicrous dismay.
"I—wish you wouldn't!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped laughing.
"Well, I won't!" she said. "I'm quite sure there's nothing nice going to happen anywhere or any time, and it'll be all the more a surprise, won't it? Oh, Ted, I didn't mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was all fun, all smoke—"
"'There's no smoke without a fire,'" Denis told the ceiling.
"Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined.
Ted still looked worried. His good nights were absent. When he had gone, Nell observed thoughtfully:—
"I wonder what it is! Oh, I hope we won't have to wait long!"
CHAPTER XXXII
Down the stairs flew Nell, out into the street, up to a banana barrow, a boy, and a puppy.
"Could you lend him to me for a while?"
The boy eyed her suspiciously. There was not much ground for suspicion, since it was hardly likely she could be contemplating theft; the puppy, though fascinating, was obviously incapable of proclaiming what breed he was intended by nature to represent. Moreover Nell, in a long pinafore and hatless, could scarcely run away with him. It was merely from force of habit that the boy eyed her suspiciously. The puppy was more discerning. He welcomed her as a long and ardently looked for friend; he turned ecstatic somersaults over her feet; then stood up, and tore at her pinafore with wild, soft little paws. She picked him up.
"May I have him? I want to paint him."
The owner of the bananas, for whom the boy and the puppy were waiting, reappeared. He was quite a gallant gentleman, and assured Nell he would be pleased to let her have the puppy for "ahour, miss," he said with a good deal of effect. "And in ahour I shall be back this way, and will fetch 'im if convenient."
Nell smuggled the puppy into the house and up to the Stronghold beneath her pinafore.
He started thehour by persisting in looking upon Kate Kearney as a butt, provided by Providence, for his especial benefit. He thought her a tremendously funny joke and the more K.K. aired her dignity, the funnier he thought her. He rolled over in uncontrollable mirth, kicking up impertinent little legs right beneath her nose; he turned somersaults over her staid body; he frisked up to her in ridiculous boxing attitudes; he slapped her face, and he jeeringly incited her over and over again to "come on."
But K.K. refused to "come on." She was furiously jealous of the unaristocratic little mongrel who had suddenly invaded her precincts. She took refuge in a hurt dignity; she turned her head away at his approach with an unmistakable suggestion. The puppy was not hurt; he had, together with his dirt and his plebeian origin, a useful thick-skinned philosophy.
K.K. retired to a corner, back to audience, and Nell tried to sketch the puppy. When held by Molly, he howled so pathetically that he procured his release, which was exactly what he meant to do. Thereupon he licked all available hands and waddled back to Kate Kearney. As interludes to his worrying of her, he tugged a great hole into the table-cloth and upset Nell's paint-water; he managed to get a pencil stuck into his mouth, and screamed with terror; he, perhaps, after all, and in spite of his plebeian philosophy, somewhat affected by K.K.'s suggestively averted nose, essayed a bath in her drinking-pan. He upset the pan, and his own feelings; dripping and whimpering at the shock of the water, he ran round the room, and chose a wet oil-painting of Nell's against which to dry himself. The result was bad for the painting, and for the puppy, too. Adorned with patches of green and blue, he waxed pathetic, sat down with a disconcerting suddenness, and put his head on one side.
Nell exclaimed, "I can't give him back like that!" and had resort to turpentine.
All the puppy's instincts arose and defied her. He wriggled and kicked and howled, and in the midst of it Sheila Pat appeared with Jim on her arm, and the information that Aunt Kezia had returned home. The puppy was released. The Atom put Jim down, and ran to him delightedly. But a change had come o'er the puppy. On the floor Jim O'Driscoll sat, lazily picking the shell from a nut. He took no notice of the puppy; his air of complete indifference was positively insulting. The puppy stood for a minute, petrified, then he pranced a little closer, and waited. Jim scratched his left ear and ruminated. The puppy barked. Jim scratched his right ear and ruminated further. The puppy made a nervous dash at him, and fled with his tail between his legs. Jim drew in the foot that the puppy had touched and went on shelling his nut. There was a pause, then the puppy approached within a yard of the blasé little figure on the floor and barked. They tried to stop him, but that puppy refused to be stopped; he had a good deal to say, and he meant to say it. That the object of the rude things he was saying gave not the slightest heed to him merely aggravated his eloquence to a louder pitch.
Molly thrust her head round the door. "Aunt Kezia is coming!"
Nell seized the puppy and poked him into the bottom shelf of the cupboard. Sheila Pat dropped Jim's cage behind the sofa, picked Jim up, poked him into it, tried to fasten the door, and Miss Kezia entered the room. There was a dead silence while she gazed about and took in every detail of disorder down to a dropped match.
"Ow—yow—yow—yo—o—ow!"
A long and distressful wail arose from the cupboard.
Now it happened that Kate Kearney had so far foregone her dignity as to approach the cupboard to dab at it with a triumphant and insulting paw.
"There it is again!" Miss Kezia was wrathful, but there was also an anxious glint in her eye. "What is the matter with the dog? Is it ill?"
Nell, fascinatedly watching the putting forth of a stealthy brown arm from beneath the sofa, in the direction of Sheila Pat's shoe buttons, responded with an irrepressible little laugh.
"I don't see anything to laugh at, Eileen! I am afraid you are very foolish and frivolous for your age."
"Ow—yow—yow—yo—o—o—oo—ow!"
The final "ow" was a veritable triumph of hideous nerve shattering. Miss Kezia's voice rose angrily: "I believe it is going mad! Or has distemper! I was foolish ever to allow it in my house! I hate dogs! It will have to be sent away if it's ill!"
The brown paw had reached and seized a shoe button. Sheila Pat was kicking frantically. The paw darted back.
"Oh, no—he—she isn't ill, Aunt Kezia—she's quite well—she's been mad—I mean, had distemper, already—oh, I—I think I'm rather m-muddley this morning—"
"I hope you're not hysterical, Eileen! You are really astonishingly foolish! As for the dog—"
K.K. had turned; her head was now facing Miss Kezia. Nell recognised the fact that the next howl could not, even by Miss Kezia, be put down to her. For a moment she thought of hustling her aunt from the room; but the detection of the puppy merely meant anger, punishment, a letter to Australia. They could face that, and Jim's arm had disappeared. They could not put up with his banishment.
There was a sudden and portentous silence in the cupboard.
Miss Kezia had a few more remarks to make. She made them. Once she deviated from the main theme of noise and general untidiness, lured by a rustle in the cupboard, on to mice. She declared that the kitchen was overrun by mice, and all because they had wantonly bought and let loose three in her house. She was going to buy new traps, as something had evidently gone wrong with the springs of hers. Twice she had found the cheese gone and the mouse, too!
Sheila Pat sat and gazed down thoughtfully at the forefinger of her right hand; a small smile flickered at the corners of her lips. The finger was rough and red. She wondered would it be possible to grease the lock of the kitchen door. It was not the pain she minded so much as the risk attached to the noise the slow turning of a stiff key makes at four or five o'clock in the morning. At the moment of her musing a determined little hand seized again on her shoe; fingers picked at a button. Sheila Pat kicked. Now, as a rule, Jim O'Driscoll was easily cowed—easily induced to retire. A frowning shake of the head had hitherto been sufficient to keep him still, in an attitude of petrified thought, for several minutes at a time. Apparently a backward kick, gentle because Sheila Pat could not, even for his own welfare bring herself to make it otherwise, had lost its power of petrification; anyhow Jim refused to abandon his tenacious hold upon her shoe button. Sheila Pat wriggled her foot out of the shoe; it disappeared immediately. Meanwhile Miss Kezia talked. She had never considered herself, or been considered by others, a talkative woman. When she left the Stronghold, there were worried lines about her face; she moved her lips in an irritated manner. It was irksome to her to be obliged to talk so much; it outraged Nature, and added to the irritation consequent on the O'Briens' misdemeanours. But she considered it her duty to talk, so she did it. And no one was grateful.
Sheila Pat rescued her button from Jim's cheek, and Nell opened the cupboard. The puppy certainly looked very charming. He lay in a nest of oats, biscuits, ink, and torn paper; a long paint-brush stuck rakishly out of the corner of his mouth. It was perhaps his expression that was so particularly charming. He had feasted on biscuits; he had tasted the flavours of oats, ink, and paper. He had had a meal to his taste, and now he was sleepy. He looked up at Nell a little mischievously and palpably with a supreme content with life. He was sleepy, and willing to be petted. That he was adorned still with patches of paint to which he had added smears of ink in no way detracted from his adorableness.
Nell said, "Oh, you bad puppy!"
She picked him up and hugged him.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Nell, carrying Jim O'Driscoll upstairs beneath her pinafore, nearly fell down at the sudden loud rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat that echoed through the house.
Sarah came running to open the door. They peeped over the balusters; Ted dashed in, up the stairs, and into them.
"You seem to be in a hurry," Denis suggested.
"Er—no—"
He stood silent.
"Police after you, old man? We'll hide you. Get into Jim's cage, and they won't know the difference!"
Nell was looking at Ted.
She said quietly, "What is it, Ted?"
"Oh—coming out? Nice day—"
A snort came from the direction of the Atom's bedroom:
"Only fog so thick that a person can't see an inch in front of her! And whichever way you look, you see nothing but mud and mud! But sure 'tis a nice day for London!"
Nell's eyes had met Ted's; she understood.
"Molly, go and put on your things. I'll get ready in a minute."
She led the way into the Stronghold. She turned and faced him.
"What is it?"
But he had grown suddenly uncomfortable.
"I hope you won't think—er—that I've been meddling," he said, with the slight drawl Nell understood so well now.
"Never!" she said. "Go on."
"Well, you might. O.B. told me about those Rêve d'or shares—" He paused.
Denis nodded.
Nell put her hand out suddenly, and rested it heavily on the table.
"What about them?" she said.
Ted spoke quickly, giving the heart of what he had to say.
"The governor says—'Hold on—don't sell.'"
There was a little pause. Nell's face had gone quite white.
"He—means?" she said.
Ted glanced at her, and away again.
"It may mean nothing—of course, you can't always tell—"
"No, no! We know that," Denis broke in impatiently. "What made your father say it?"
"He's out there, you know—South Africa. He's got no end of a head. And he's a shareholder. I asked him about them in a letter some time ago. He wrote last week saying he believed they weren't as bad as he'd thought, but he couldn't be sure yet—"
"That was the night our Australian letters had come," Nell said.
He nodded.
"Just now I got a cablegram—saying, 'Hold on, don't sell.'"
He paused.
"He may be making a mistake," he said slowly. "The shares may not go up—don't reckon on it—" He stopped.
"We—we can't help it, Ted," Nell said shakily.
"No."
He walked over to the window and looked out. There was a little silence. Then suddenly she laughed out, an excited, wild little laugh.
"Oh, Iknowit's true! Iknowit is! We shall go home—Denis, don't youfeelit? Ted, it's all you—all you, Teddie! You'll come with us. You'll climb the hills with us—you'll love our home—" Her voice broke.
Ted grew very red; he turned his back on her, and spoke, in a tone of elaborate unconcern, to Denis.
"Thought you might come round to Bumpus's, old man, with me, about that book—"
"Oh, hang Bumpus! Hang the book!" Denis interpolated.
Nell's charming face, laughing, was poked suddenly close to Ted's.
"I'm not going to cry, Teddie! D'you think I'd repay you like that? And I won't even try to thank you—"
"Nothing to thank me for," he interposed.
"Oh, no, it's nothing to hear that we're going back to Kilbrannan soon," observed Denis.
"Don't be such a fool, O.B.!" Ted turned on him angrily. "You're not a baby! I tell you, those shares may never pay another dividend!"
"Oh, Teddie!"
The woeful change in her face made him add weakly:—
"But I've never known the Pater to make a mistake over that sort of thing—"
"Oh,Teddie!"
She was radiant again. She started talking; her voice was breathless, almost a song of joy.
Ted said heavily, "It's an awful responsibility."
She stopped in the middle of a laugh.
"Anyway—in any case—" she said, "you—oh, how good you are, Ted!"
"Good Heavens!" he ejaculated. "Why don't you put me up on a pedestal and worship me?"
He spoke with strong irritation.
"Oh, how rude you are! You English are queer! Denis can do with any amount of gratitude."
"Well, I'm not Denis," he grumped. "Your father's not likely to sell out, is he?"
"No, no one'd buy the shares, you know," Denis replied confidently.
But Ted had inherited somewhat of his father's business faculty.
"Don't be an ass, O.B.!" he ejaculated. "Some chap might scent that they're likely to go up, and offer to buy them of your governor."
"Oh, Denis, and dad would sell them fornothing!" Nell cried. "Oh, what shall we do? He'd never suspect—he thinks they're worth nothing. Ted, tell us what to do!"
"We must cable to him," Denis put in. "Where's my hat? I'm off!"
"Oh, do wait for me. Do let me come, too!"
She fled into her bedroom. She dragged out a coat. Sheila Pat was folding up her nightgown.
"Are you goin' out?" she demanded.
"Yes. Find me a hat, there's a sweet."
Sheila Pat crawled under the bed, and dived into a hatbox.
"Where are you goin'? I'll come, too."
Nell dissembled badly.
"Oh, we—we're only going just out—for a little while. Give me a hat, Atom."
Sheila Pat handed it to her in silence; she studied Nell's superlatively guilty face with calm disapproval.
"Why don't you own up that you're doin' somethin' secret?" she queried disdainfully.
"Oh, don't be silly, Atom! Oh, whywon'tmy hat go on?"
"I'm comin' too," Sheila Pat said, and she smiled a little triumphant smile.
"Oh!" said Nell.
Sheila Pat went to the wardrobe, and lifted down her coat. Nell kicked one of her boots beneath the chest of drawers.
"I can see what you're doin'," said Sheila Pat, calmly.
Nell began to laugh.
"You can come if you're ready to start when we are, but we won't wait," she said, and ran out of the room.
A cold little voice pursued her.
"I was only pertendin'; I never intrude where I'm not wanted."
Nell hardened her heart. She burst into the Stronghold.
"Do come! Oh, every moment's precious!"
As they went downstairs Denis said, "Lancaster's been pointing out that of course we may be advising the Pater quite wrong—"
"How, Denis? Oh,how?" She wrinkled her brows anxiously.
"The shares mayn't go up, you see."
"Oh, that!" she cried relieved. "Yes, I know."
"But, by telling him to hold on, we should stop his selling if he got a chance and if they don't go up—oh, you see, don't you?"
She nodded.
They let themselves out into the street in silence.
"I wanted you to understand," Denis said.
"Yes."
She looked down abstractedly at her thin house-slippers, which she had forgotten to change.
"I want to send the cablegram," she said. "I want to take the risk."
"That's all right. So do I."
"It's four and tenpence a word to Melbourne," observed Ted, prosaically. "What shall you say?"
"'Hold on to Rêve d'or shares,' I think," Denis said.
"'Don't sell' would be a word less," Nell suggested. "'Do not,'" Ted amended. "You mustn't put 'don't' in a telegram."
'"Hold on to' is more emphatic," Denis opined.
On the way back Nell said hesitatingly:—
"Denis, do you think it'll frighten them dreadfully to get a cablegram from us?"
"Only for a second, and it can't be helped, worse luck!"
"We won't tell Molly or the Atom, will we?"
"No. We'll wait. It would drive the Atom mad to wait."
"Yes." She looked as if she thought it might drive her mad, too.
When she and Denis were alone in the Stronghold that night, she observed elatedly, and with considerable confidence, "And we'll be able to manage so beautifully, because we've had such practice in economising lately."
He nodded.
"We'll live on potatoes, old girl! I must say I prefer to economise on praties rather than on porridge."
"I've been thinking it all out. We'll have to be very careful, of course, but what does it matter—what does it matter? I'll sweep and clean and groom the horses! I'll have one dress a year—oh, Denis! Denis! I'm all in a wuzzle. I'm so happy that—"
"Let's go out! Come along. I shall burst if I don't."
"We'll find a quiet square andrun!" she cried.
It was ten o'clock. At eleven o'clock they remembered that they would be locked out. They returned and threw small stones at Herr Schmidt's window. He let them in.
"Ach," he exclaimed, looking at Nell, "you make my dry heart glad!"
CHAPTER XXXIV
Miss Kezia entered the dining room.
Molly, hastily and with a very red face, slipped the sheet of paper on which she had been writing beneath the blotting paper. She looked up, and the giggle that had started to her lips died away.
"Oh! Oh, can I do anything for you, Aunt Kezia?" She jumped up and kicked over her chair.
Miss Kezia replied stiffly that she required nothing from her. She looked at her thoughtfully.
"I suppose it was you who put my everyday bonnet into the wrong box?" she queried.
"I—oh, was it the wrong box? I—I'm very sorry—"
"And it was you who sewed a black button on my glove, while the others are white, I suppose?"
"I didn't think it would matter—"
"And may I ask where you have hidden my keys?"
"I—I haven't touched them!" Eagerly she seized on the small bit of relief. "I haven't seen them."
"You surprise me!" Miss Kezia said, with a strong inflexion of sarcasm in her tone. "Hadn't you better pick up that chair?"
Molly stooped and set it erect; she blinked back tears.
Miss Kezia said: "You are a very peculiar girl, Molly. I should be obliged if you would leave my things alone. You puzzle me, but I understand that you mean well."
Molly's downcast face lightened. Impulsively she burst out, "Oh, thank you, aunt—auntie!"
"I," said Miss Kezia, "object to pet names!"
She walked from the room, leaving a scarlet and abashed niece behind her.
She went into Herr Schmidt's room to see that Sarah had dusted it thoroughly. She found Sheila Pat sitting at the table, with paper, pens, and ink of Herr Schmidt's before her.
"What are you doing in here, Sheila?"
"Writin' a private letter," said Sheila Pat.
"Take it up into your room! You have no business in here at all."
"Has," said Sheila Pat, in very judicial tones, "has Herr Schmidt ever told you that you're like a little sunbeam in his room, and just as welcome?"
Miss Kezia seemed a little disconcerted.
"N-no," she said.
"Then you'd better go," the Atom observed. "He's said that to me."
She bent over her writing.
Miss Kezia came closer.
"Please," said Sheila Pat, "don't read what I'm writin'. It's very private."
"May I ask," said Miss Kezia, "if Herr Schmidt has also given you permission to use his writing materials and paper?"
"He hasn't given mepermission," said Sheila Pat; "he asked me to do him thehonourof placin' them at my disposal."
It sounded very grand. Miss Kezia left the room.
She went upstairs to the Stronghold to speak to Nell. Nell was seated at the table, writing. She started up guiltily as Miss Kezia entered the room.
"You all appear to be very busy writing this morning," Miss Kezia said crossly.
For some reason or other this seemed to amuse Nell considerably. She began to laugh.
"Oh, are they writing, too? I wonder—" She broke off, and went on laughing.
"Eileen, I am constantly obliged to chide you for your frivolity. You laugh at nothing; or, at least, I can see no cause for laughter?"
There was a pronounced query at the end of her sentence. Nell strove to answer it.
"Well, you see—you see—we're writing—private letters—at least, I am, and now you say—so I suppose they are, too—you see—oh, I c-c-can't help it, it's s-so f-f-funny!"
Miss Kezia gave the message she had come to deliver; she gave it in an austere voice, and with a face of disgust. The she went.
"Oh, I'm a w-worm!" Nell chuckled, crawling beneath the sofa to speak to James. "But, oh, Jimmy, I feel all mad these days! If—if it comes to nothing—but it won't! it won't! Oh, Jimmy!"
The next morning was bright and sunny, with a gladness in the air, a song of spring. It was the first of April, and even in London it was a glorious day.
"I won't eventhinkthe thought, 'What it would be like at Kilbrannan,'" Nell declared to Denis, when she met him on her way down to breakfast, "because—shan't we soon be there?" She broke out singing:—
"'There blooms a bonny flower,Up the heather glen;Tho' bright in sun, in shower'Tis just as bright again.I never can pass by it,I never dar' go nigh it,My heart it won't be quiet,Up the heather glen.Sing O, the blooming heather!O, the heather glen!Where fairest fairies gatherTo lure in mortal men—'"
"'There blooms a bonny flower,Up the heather glen;Tho' bright in sun, in shower'Tis just as bright again.I never can pass by it,I never dar' go nigh it,My heart it won't be quiet,Up the heather glen.Sing O, the blooming heather!O, the heather glen!Where fairest fairies gatherTo lure in mortal men—'"
"'There blooms a bonny flower,
Up the heather glen;
Tho' bright in sun, in shower
'Tis just as bright again.
I never can pass by it,
I never dar' go nigh it,
My heart it won't be quiet,
Up the heather glen.
Sing O, the blooming heather!
O, the heather glen!
Where fairest fairies gather
To lure in mortal men—'"
She broke off; she turned to him on the last stair, hung on to his arm.
"Denis, if only,onlywe might tell them! My hair fairly rises with the weight of the secret! I know Sheila Pat is wondering what has come to us!"
"Eileen, come in to breakfast!"
They went in. On the table there lay a great pile of letters. Molly and the Atom came hurrying in; Denis tossed letters to them all, and kept a few himself.
"I cannot understand why there are so many letters this morning," Miss Kezia observed. She looked round the table, surprised.
"Why do you not open them?" she asked.
"Anticipation is the soul of wit!" observed Denis, absurdly.
They fingered their letters, laughing, glancing at each other.
"Have you all gone mad?" Miss Kezia demanded.
"That's a good suggestion," Denis opined thoughtfully. "They do look somewhat abbreviated in the top story. As for me, I will open my letters at one minute past twelve, noon."
He airily tucked them away in an inner pocket.
"I request an explanation of these horribly addressed letters!" Miss Kezia cried.
The laughter broke out hilariously. Denis stretched out, picked up one of Sheila Pat's letters, and eyed it with pride.
"I thought that rather good," he observed. "Look at the curly little heads, and those tricky Greeke's!"
"Molly!" Miss Kezia turned to her with an air of finality, "Molly, willyouvouchsafe me an explanation?"
Molly, at once proud and horrified, plunged forthwith:—
"Oh, yes, Aunt Kezia, you see, it's April the first, and you're a fool if you don't know it—"
She made an unfortunate pause, flustered by a burst of laughter.
Miss Kezia's cheek reddened a little.
"Molly, your language—"
"Oh, no! Oh, I didn't mean that! I mean that if you don't know it, you get caught, and if you do, you don't, and—and—you see—we wrote letters to each other—we didn't know the others were remembering the date, too, and of course if it had been our own handwriting we'd have known, you see. So we disguised them, and we can't open them before twelve or we'll be fools." She stopped, out of breath.
Miss Kezia said slowly:—
"Do you mean that you have wasted all those stamps, that paper, those envelopes, on a ridiculous childish game? That you have thrown away honest pennies on such tom-foolery?"
She proceeded to deliver a lecture on thrift which lasted throughout breakfast. Just before Denis started for the bank, a telegram came for Nell. Sarah brought it up to the Stronghold. She looked at Nell with scared pity in her face.
"It's for you, miss!"
Nell seized it, tore it open, burst out laughing.
"I'm caught! It's from Moira McCarthy! Oh, IwishI could catch her!"
She crumpled it up and threw it at Denis.
Sheila Pat picked it up and studied it.
"April 1," she read thoughtfully. She smoothed the paper out with a tender little hand, then folded it carefully, carried it to her room, and locked it in the box where she kept such treasures as she had brought to London with her. They were in the hall a little later, Denis had just gone, when there was another loud double knock at the door. Sarah came running, but Nell was before her. She opened the door; a telegraph boy stood on the step. She took the telegram from him. "For you this time, Sheila Pat!"
Sheila Pat took it. She looked at it.
"And 'er so little!" Sarah murmured from the background.
"Molly," said the Atom, "wouldn't you like to open it?"
"No, thank you!"
"I know it's from that Ted!" opined Nell. "Open it, Atom. The boy's waiting to know if there's an answer!"
From the dining room issued Miss Kezia.
"A telegram? And for you, Sheila? Why do you not open it?"
Sheila Pat hesitated. Longing to see if it were by any chance another telegram from Ireland, and determination not to let Ted Lancaster catch her, fought within her small bosom.
"Are you afraid?" Miss Kezia said, coming forward. "I will open it for you."
Now at the opening words of her sentence Sheila Pat's head had been uplifted with a disgusted jerk, but as Miss Kezia finished speaking, a sudden impish glow shone in her face, and gravely she held out the orange envelope. Miss Kezia took it. They watched breathlessly. She tore open the envelope, she read what was written on the form inside. A great and triumphant satisfaction illumined the Atom's small features as she watched the expression that overspread her aunt's countenance.
"It is, I suppose, intended to be witty," Miss Kezia observed at last. "I consider it a vulgar and sinfully wasteful joke. Sheila, did you know what the telegram contained?"
"I thought it was somethin' like that," the Atom said. "Please give it to me." She turned to Nell. "There can't be two April Fools overonething, can there?"
The telegram was long; it was addressed in full to Miss Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien, and it said: "Shure and isn't it afther being the 1st of April then, och begorra, and isn't it meself will be having the laugh of ye entoirely at all at all, for when ye rade this, won't ye be afther being taken in ochone acushla!"
"That telegram," said Miss Kezia, in awful tones, "cost four shillings and eightpence to send."
Nell eyed her admiringly.
"How quickly you can add up!" she said.
A little later Molly stole guiltily away up to her room. She locked the door, and sitting down on her bed began to tear open envelopes. Presently to her through the keyhole came a whisper:—
"Molly O'Brien, I hear the rending of note-paper!"
Molly jumped; her face grew scarlet.
"Oh, Nell! I!—I—"
Through the keyhole there was a ripple of triumphant laughter. Molly stood, red, and stammering futile excuses, and heard the laughter die away down the passage.