CHAPTER II. The Misses O’Hara.
CHAPTER III. Eileen the Dreamer.
CHAPTER IV. Paddy’s Adventure.
CHAPTER V. Ted Masterman.
CHAPTER VI. Lawrence Blake.
CHAPTER VII. Lawrence Finds Eileen on the Shingles.
CHAPTER VIII. Paddy’s Pigs.
CHAPTER IX. Concerning a Supper-Dance.
CHAPTER X. A Letter from Calcutta.
CHAPTER XI. The Scrimmage Party.
CHAPTER XII. The Ball.
CHAPTER XIII. Paddy’s Views on Sentimentality.
CHAPTER XIV. The Conservatory and the Den.
CHAPTER XV. Dread and Wrath.
CHAPTER XVI. The First Awakening.
CHAPTER XVII. Brooding Clouds.
CHAPTER XVIII. The Angel of Death.
CHAPTER XIX. In Which the Worst Came.
CHAPTER XX. Explanations.
CHAPTER XXI. Two Love Stories.
CHAPTER XXII. Good-Bye.
CHAPTER XXIII. Gwendoline Carew.
CHAPTER XXIV. Lawrence Hears Some News.
CHAPTER XXV. A Curious Engagement.
CHAPTER XXVI. Paddy Makes Her Cousin’s Acquaintance.
CHAPTER XXVII. Paddy has a Visitor.
CHAPTER XXVIII. The New Home.
CHAPTER XXIX. A Strange Coincidence.
CHAPTER XXX. An Encounter.
CHAPTER XXXI. Paddy Makes a New Friend.
CHAPTER XXXII. Paddy Learns Her Mistake.
CHAPTER XXXIII. Patricia the Great.
CHAPTER XXXIV. Robert Morony on Church Restoration.
CHAPTER XXXV. The Picnic.
CHAPTER XXXVI. The Rescue.
CHAPTER XXXVII. “Stay here with me.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII. Gwen’s Views on Matrimony.
CHAPTER XXXIX. A Christmas Surprise.
CHAPTER XL. A Budget of News.
CHAPTER XLI. In Lawrence’s Den.
CHAPTER XLII. “What would an Irish Fusilier do?”
CHAPTER XLIII. A Man’s Pain.
CHAPTER XLIV. “I Cannot Come.”
CHAPTER XLV. The Invalid.
CHAPTER XLVI. The Solution.
CHAPTER I
Concerning Paddy’s Blouse.
Paddy Adair, the “next-best-thing,” as she was fond of calling herself,
and the reason for which will appear hereafter, sat at the table, and
spread all around her were little square books of “patterns for
blouses,” from which she was vainly endeavouring to make a selection.
Meanwhile she kept up a running conversation with the only other
occupant of the room, a girl with dreamy eyes of true Irish blue, who
sat in the window, motionless, gazing across the Loch at the distant
mountains. She heard no word of all her sister was saying, but that did
not appear to trouble Paddy in the least, so doubtless it was not an
unusual state of affairs.
“This one with green spots and pink roses would look the best with my
blue skirt,” Paddy said, holding one pattern at arm’s length and
surveying it critically, “but the blue one with the white border would
look better with my grey. I wonder which you would choose, Eily? I
wonder which would be the most becoming to my peculiar style of beauty,
or,” with a twinkle in her eyes, “I should say the most concealing to
my unique lack of it. I think I’ll risk the green spots and pink roses,
because it doesn’t really look half bad with the grey.
“Oh, but my hat!” with a comical exclamation of dismay, “there’s my
silly old hat has got pansies in it, and they’d look just awful with
the green and pink, Eileen! What _am_ I to do, with all my things
different colours, that don’t seem any of them to go together? I wonder
if I’d better bring out my whole wardrobe and go through the hundred
and one patterns again? Or shall I have a white-bordered thing, that is
not particular and will go with just all of them? Only I’d have to
start at the beginning to find it, and I’m so sick of the very sight of
them. Here have I had these patterns three days, and I’ve already spent
about five pounds’ worth of brain-power upon a blouse that will cost
five shillings. If only you’d help, Eileen!” looking up toward the
figure in the window, “instead of staring at those silly old mountains
like a stuffed goose!
“Eileen!”—as the dreamer took no notice—“Eileen! do you hear that I’m
floundering in a sea of patterns! Your one and only sister, and you sit
there like an Egyptian mummy stuffed with dried peas!
“I’ll make you help—so there,”—and with a sudden movement she swept all
the books of patterns into her arms and deposited them, helter-skelter,
upon her sister’s head, laughing gayly at the picture of solemn-faced
Eileen with the little square books scattered all around and upon her.
“Now, Miss Sphinx,” she said, “do you think you could come down from
the clouds for five minutes and discuss anything so distressingly
earthy as clothes?”
Eileen’s face broke into a very sweet smile. She had not in the least
intended to be indifferent, but long before Paddy commenced consulting
her she had been in the middle of composing a lovely poem about
mountains and streams and birds and things, and she had not really
heard any of her remarks at all.
“What’s the matter, Paddy?” she asked, eyeing the scattered patterns
with amusement.
“Matter!” cried Paddy, “everything’s the matter! How on earth am I to
select a blouse that will go with a blue dress, a green dress, a grey
dress, a hat with pansies in, and a scarlet tam-o’-shanter! I’ve been
worrying with those stupid patterns for days, and instead of getting
any nearer a decision, I keep on thinking of something fresh that
nothing seems to go with. Now it’s your turn to worry; you ought to,
you know, because Charity begins at home.”
“Why not have something in cream?” suggested Eileen; “it saves a lot of
bother.”
“Yes, and what do I look like in cream, with my sallow skin? It’s all
very well for you with your ivory and roses, you look well in anything.
I don’t think it was at all fair for you to have everything nice while
I am burdened for life with a sallow skin and a snub nose. Cream
flannel would be nearly as bad as brown holland for me, and when I wear
brown holland you can’t tell where the dress ends and I begin,” and the
corners of Paddy’s mischievous mouth were momentarily drawn down in
great disgust.
“You could wear bright-coloured ties,” suggested Eileen, “and have one
of every colour you wanted.”
“Why so I could,” brightening up, “and provided I don’t always lose the
colour I want at the moment of requiring it, it will save a lot of
bother.”
“But you always will, you know,” said a gay masculine voice; “you’ll
keep every one waiting five minutes longer than usual hunting for the
required colour, and then turn up in a red tie with a green hat,” and
before either of them could speak, Jack O’Hara, from the Parsonage, was
coming through the window, head first, trailing his long legs after
him. “I’ve just had a little practice at this sort of thing,” he ran
on. “I came from Newry, with the Burtons, a whole carriage full of
them, and we had a great time. The train was just going to start when I
arrived, and the station master had locked their compartment, and when
I asked him to let me in, he tried to put me into a smoker next door. I
said, ‘No, thanks, not for Jack this journey.’ He murmured something
about the Burton’s carriage being full up, and I couldn’t go in it, so
I said, ‘You see if I can’t,’ and took a header through the window,
right on to their laps.”
“But you don’t know them!” exclaimed Paddy, whose face at the same time
expressed the greatest relish at the episode.
“I’ve been introduced,” was the calm reply. “Fletcher introduced me in
Hill Street a week ago.”
“Whatever did they think of you?” asked Eileen, unable to resist
smiling.
“Oh, we had a ripping time. They’re awfully jolly girls, and they had
that little imp Basil with them. He amused himself trying to throw
everything he could get at out of the window as we went along. But
touching this blouse,” with a sudden change of voice, “why don’t you
ask my advice? You haven’t either of you a grain of taste compared to
mine.”
“Yours!” exclaimed Paddy scornfully, “and there you sit with emerald
green in your stockings, a yellow waistcoat, and a terra cotta tie.”
“What’s the matter with my stockings?” surveying his fine pair of legs
with an air of pride. “That’s the O’Hara tartan; I’m very proud of it.
You’re not supposed to look at me all at once. You should enjoy the
stockings first, and then gradually work up to the waistcoat, and
afterward to the tie.”
“Get thoroughly seasoned and strengthened before reaching the face, I
suppose you mean!” said Paddy, for which a well-aimed cushion brought
her rippling red-brown hair half-way down her back.
Not that Jack had any occasion to feel insulted, because after
twenty-four years’ acquaintance with a looking glass, it was hardly
likely he could be totally oblivious to the fact that Nature had been
almost prodigal to him in her good gifts. One might go far to find a
more sunny pair of blue eyes, a brighter smile, or a more handsome
specimen of manhood generally. And to this was added a rare fineness of
disposition, so full of sincerity and sweetness, that there was no room
for anything small at all, not even the personal vanity that one would
have felt obliged to forgive him. But, then, as a matter of fact, every
one forgave Jack anything, and there was scarcely a house within a
radius of twelve miles where he did not come in and out just as he
pleased, finding an unfailing welcome when he entered, and leaving the
same regret when he left. Yet he did things that would not have been
suffered, by one in a thousand, in anyone else. He shot over every
one’s moors and covers uninvited, he fished every one’s stream, he
sailed every one’s yacht, and rode most people’s horses. He was, in
fact, an arrant poacher, and yet neither gamekeeper nor owner could
withstand his witty sallies, nor the laughter in his blue eyes when he
was caught, and the young sinner himself used to say that though he was
a poor clergyman’s son with scarcely a penny to his name, he had some
of the finest shooting and fishing in Ireland, and lived a life a
prince might envy. Of course he ought to have been worrying about his
future, and what would eventually become of him, but he was far too
thoroughly Irish to do anything so foolish. “What’s the use of worrying
yet!” he would say. “Can’t a fellow have a good time in peace, while he
has the chance! I’ll start worrying presently—if I don’t forget”; then
he would probably give his last sixpence to a beggar, and immediately
afterward go into a shop to buy something for Aunt Jane that he thought
would please her; and when he discovered, with surprise, that he was
unable to pay for it, he would get the shopkeeper to put it down to his
father and promise to call in another day with the money. But that
would generally be the very last he would remember of it, and two or
three months later the Rev. Patrick O’Hara would wonder when and why he
had bought that copy of “The Eternal City,” or that work-basket with
red lining. It was no use asking Jack, because he had always forgotten;
and though he would immediately empty his pockets into his father’s
lap, so to speak, there was never enough in them to make it worth
while. It was quite the exception for Jack ever to remember anything.
If he rowed across to Warrenpoint to buy the sausages for Sunday’s
breakfast, he would be quite as likely as not to return without them;
and if he took a note, it was a hundred to one it came back in his
pocket unopened, and remained there several days.
“Now I wonder what I came across for, Pat!” was a usual remark to the
old boatman, when on the point of rowing himself back again.
“Faith! Ye’ve a head like a sieve, Mr Jack,” Pat would reply. “Was it
they sausages agen? or maybe something at the grocers? or some shoe
laces for ’is riverence?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, Pat, but I’ll just have to go and ask what
I’ve forgotten. Begorra! if I’d no head at all to put these things
into, they couldn’t slip out again, could they! and then I shouldn’t
vex Aunt Jane’s soul with my forgetfulness. If it was sausages, Pat,
I’ll fire my gun three times off the landing-stage, and you must just
go up to the butcher yourself and bring them across;” with which he
would whistle a merry tune and row leisurely back across the Loch. But
long before he reached the other side, he would again have forgotten,
and instead of going at once to the Parsonage, he would stroll into the
garden of The Ghan House, which adjoined, to see if Paddy were
available for the afternoon, or if by chance Eileen wandered dreamily
under the trees gazing at the mountains.
One of the great problems of Jack’s existence at that time, indeed, the
only one that he ever took seriously, was whether he liked Paddy or
Eileen the best. Ever since he was two years old, the Adairs had lived
in The Ghan House, next door to the Parsonage, and he always declared
he had distinct recollections of a long white bolster-like apparition
in a nurse’s arms, from the first day it appeared in the garden. He
could just get about sufficiently well alone, then, to be always in
mischief, and at his first opportunity, when the two nurses were deeply
engaged in conversation, he got hold of the long clothes and tugged
with all his might and main, to pull the baby on to the ground, a feat
which he very nearly achieved. That was Eileen, and just as she had
looked at him with big, calm, thoughtful eyes, then, not in the least
disturbed by his vigorous attempts to unseat her, so she looked at him
now in the first bloom of her beauty, quelling his over-exuberance of
spirit, calming his boyish audacity, and making him sometimes feel as
if he wanted to lie down and let her walk over him. But then on the
other hand Paddy was such good fun! When the second bolster-like
apparition appeared, he was four, and being somewhat weary of the
solemn two-year-old Eileen he took rapidly to the ugly little
brown-faced baby, whose eyes already began to dance with a suggestion
of the mischievous tendency which only developed steadily year by year
and claimed them kindred spirits from their earliest infancy. What the
nurses at The Ghan House and the Parsonage suffered over those two imps
of wickedness would fill a whole book; and why they were not drowned
over and over again, or killed falling from trees, or run over on the
railway that skirted the grounds, or suffocated in mountain bogs,
remains forever one of the mysteries of their existence. And things
were much the same still, though the nurses were no more and they had
reached the mature ages of twenty-four and twenty, respectively. Where
Jack went Paddy went, or very usually followed; and there was scarcely
an act of daring even their busy brains could conceive, that they two
had not achieved together—much to General Adair’s delight and Mrs
Adair’s disquiet, for she felt that if her scapegrace daughter were
ever to grow up at all she really ought to begin at once; and yet was
quite at a loss by what procedure the change should commence. Boarding
school had been tried, but there the girl had drooped and pined to such
an extent that when the General went one day to see her, he had been so
shocked and upset that he had had her trunk packed at once, and taken
her straight back to Ireland without telling her mother anything about
it, until they walked into the hall of The Ghan House.
“I can’t help it,” was all he had said, in reply to maternal
remonstrances. “She wasn’t meant for boarding school life. I expect
when the Lord made her, He fashioned her for running wild by the
mountains and Loch, and well just have to let her grow up in her own
way.” And an hour later he laughed till he nearly made himself ill over
the spectacle of a small boat upside down in the bay, with Paddy
clinging to it, while a coal barge waited alongside to pick her up and
presently landed her close by the General’s landing-stage, a mass of
mud and water and coal dust.
“Better not let your mother see you,” he managed to gasp. “Faith! I’ve
wanted a boy all my life, but there’s no doubt I’ve got the very next
best thing.” Then he went off to the Parsonage to tell Miss Jane and
Miss Mary O’Hara, while Paddy slipped in the back way and was smuggled
up to the bathroom by a faithful old housekeeper who worshipped any
flesh and blood related to the General, whom she had known ever since
he joined the Dublin Fusiliers, and embarked on the career that made
his old regiment as proud and as fond of him, as he, to his last gasp,
was of them.
But to return to the vexed question of the blouse, the three young
people, having settled the difficulty concerning each other’s taste to
their satisfaction, though in a somewhat unflattering fashion, Jack and
Paddy sat on the table swinging their feet and discussed the delicate
question of what would best suit the latter’s complexion.
Then suddenly Jack looked up with an innocent expression. “What’s the
good of wasting all this time about a body’s complexion when they
haven’t got one!” he said.
“How dare you! I’ve a beautiful olive tinge!”
“Olive!” teasingly; “why you look as if you’d washed your face with my
brown boot polish! It must be rather awful to be so ugly that you look
much the same in anything,” he finished.
“Oh, you scoundrel!—you long-legged kangaroo!—you big-footed
elephant!—you—you—” and failing words altogether to express her
feelings, Paddy commenced belabouring him over the head with a small
sofa bolster, calling out to Eileen to “be a man and come and help
her.”
“No, no,” gasped Jack, struggling to protect himself, “remain a woman,
Eileen, and be ready to bandage my wounds when this vixen has worn
herself out. Who would have dreamt I was letting myself in for this!
Why I thought she knew she was ugly, it didn’t seem possible she could
help knowing it!—I—I—” but just then the door opened and in the midst
of the racket Miss Jane and Miss Mary O’Hara stepped daintily into the
room.