PATSY
“Miss Kiligrew,” said little Lord Gawdor, looking up from his slate and
the multiplication sum on it that wouldn’t come right.
“Yes, Robert?”
“William, the page-boy, was sent away yesterday for stealing the jam.”
“Go on with your sum,” answered the governess, who was seated at the
other end of the table helping Doris, little Lord Gawdor’s sister, to
make a map. “This is the third time you have interrupted me with
frivolous remarks. How can you expect to make your sum come right if you
do not fix your mind on your slate?”
“I will in a minit,” said his lordship; “but I want to tell you, he’d
cribbed a pot of plum jam, and he heard some one coming, and he popped
it in the copper in the back kitchen where the clothes were boiling.
Gran’ma said she never heard of an act of such—what was it, Doris?”
“Turpentine, I think,” replied Doris, throwing back her golden hair from
her forehead, relieved to escape for a moment from the monotony of
map-making.
“‘Turpitude,’ I suppose you mean,” said Miss Kiligrew.
“Yes, that was it,” said Lord Gawdor. “What’s it mean?”
“Wickedness,” replied Miss Kiligrew. “Go on with your sum.”
“I will; but I want just to tell you, he went away yesterday, and
gran’ma said to Mrs Kinsella the cook she didn’t know what she’d do for
a page-boy, and cook said she’d try and get Patsy Rooney, the son of the
keeper, to come. He’s that red-headed boy we saw carrying the rabbits in
the park the other day. My eye!” he concluded with a burst of laughter,
“won’t he look funny in buttons!”
“Go on with your sum,” said Miss Kiligrew severely, “and don’t use
vulgar expressions before your sister. Who taught you to say that?”
“What?”
“My eye.”
“William, I b’lieve.”
“Well, it is a very good thing he was sent about his business. Go on
with your sum.”
Lord Gawdor did as he was bid, and there was silence for a while, broken
only by the squeaking of his pencil on the slate and an occasional
clicking sound from under the table, where Selina, his youngest sister,
aged five, was seated on the floor playing with a box of bricks. They
were in the day nursery, which was also the schoolroom, of Glen Druid
Park, a great old Irish country house.
Little Lord Gawdor’s mother was dead and his father was in India. He and
his sisters were living with their grandmother, Lady Seagrave. It was
three weeks before Christmas, and as Lady Seagrave had invited a
house-party, the house was in a state of upset owing to the
preparations. Downstairs rooms were being cleaned and dusted, carpets
taken up and shaken, mirrors polished, and mattresses standing to air
before huge fires.
All the fun of a general house-cleaning was going on, and it seemed very
hard to Lord Gawdor and Doris that they had to sit all the morning doing
sums and making maps instead of helping to increase the confusion down
below.
“I’ve done my sum,” said his lordship at last.
“When I have finished demarcating this frontier I will look at it,” said
Miss Kiligrew, who had a paint brush in her hand, and was in the act of
tinting with red the boundary line between Cochin China and
Somewhere-else.
“All right,” said the boy; “don’t hurry, I can wait as long as you
like.” He left the chair and, going to the window, he climbed on to the
window-seat and looked out at the park. He had scarcely been a minute at
the window when he gave a cry.
“Miss Kiligrew—come here, quick!”
The governess and Doris left the table and came to the window.
“That’s him,” said Lord Gawdor, pointing to a small figure trudging
across the park.
“Who?” asked the governess.
“Patsy Rooney,” replied he.
“How dare you call me from my work to look at such nonsense!” cried Miss
Kiligrew. “Have you no regard for the value of my time?”
“Patsy isn’t nonsense,” replied his lordship. “They say he can trap
rabbits better than his father, and he keeps the ferrits and helps to
clean the guns, and,” finished up Lord Gawdor, dropping off the
window-seat and coming back wearily to the table, “I wish to goodness I
was him!”
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