THE FIRST GUEST
“Doris,” said Lord Gawdor, breaking into the schoolroom next afternoon,
“Mr Fanshawe is comin’ to-day!”
“Don’t say ‘comin’,” replied Doris, looking up from her book; “say
‘coming.’ It’s only the Johnny-jumped-ups that clip their words; I heard
Uncle Molyneux saying so.”
“Who are they?”
“Oh, brewers and shipowners and people,” said Doris with fine contempt.
“Who’s Mr Fanshawe?”
“I dunno. I heard Mrs Kinsella say he was a cousin of father’s, and I
heard Mary, the between-maid, telling Biddy Mahony he was coming to-day.
He’s coming for Christmas, and he’s bringing a lot of horses. Rest of
the people are coming to-morrow, but Mr Fanshawe’s been staying with
some people hunting forty miles away, and he’s going to drive over.”
“Wonder what he’ll be like? I say, isn’t it rubbish us being stuck up
here like this!”
“Let’s send a round-robin to granny to ask her to let’s come down,”
suggested Lord Gawdor.
“You don’t know granny!” replied Doris, subsiding into the book she was
reading.
They were still prisoners confined to the upper part of the house, and
they would have to remain prisoners till the next morning, for their
grandmother was an old lady who never went back on her word.
At this moment a knock came to the door, and Patsy entered with a
coal-scuttle full of coal.
Patsy, as a rule was a bright-looking boy, enough, but this afternoon
his face was very lugubrious and his hair looked tousled. It was always
like that when anything, to use his own expression, “addled” him; no
brushing would keep it down, it stuck out in all directions. Patsy’s
hair was a sort of weather-glass from which you could tell the state of
his mind; when angry or fighting it seemed to bristle just as the back
of a wire-haired terrier bristles; when he was “addled” it stuck out
“every which way” as Mrs Kinsella once said.
“Hullo, Patsy!” cried Lord Gawdor. “What’s the matter with you? Why
don’t you go and brush your hair?”
“Bob!” said Doris, “don’t be personal.”
“Patsy don’t matter,” replied Lord Gawdor.
“Sure, Mrs Kinsella has been brushin’ at it for an hour, Misther
Robert,” said Patsy, putting his coal box down. “‘What ails you?’ says
she, ‘for it’s more like a broom than a page-boy you are this mornin’,’
says she. ‘Sure, it’s addled I am,’ says I.”
“What has addled you, Patsy?” asked Doris.
“Dhrames, Miss Doris.”
“What were the dreams, Patsy?”
“I dhreamt I let robbers into the house through the bedroom windy,”
replied Patsy in a faltering voice. “Miss Doris, what would they be
afther doin’ to me if I did a thing like that?”
“They would hang you, Patsy,” replied Doris in a cheerful voice.
“Ohone!” cried the unfortunate Patsy, as if he were addressing some
third person, “listen to that?—sure, it’s hanged I’d be. Miss Doris!”
“Yes, Patsy?”
“If I was goin’ about wid me legs where me arums ought to be, and me
face twisted back to front, and me nose turned into a pig’s snout—for I
dhreamt I was like that in me dhrame—what would I do for a livin’ at
all, at all?”
“I don’t know,” said Doris, trying to conjure up an occupation for a
person so peculiarly situated and failing. “But you aren’t going to be
like that, so don’t think about it.”
“Miss Doris,” said Patsy, who listened to this advice without relaxing
in the least the lugubrious expression on his face, “whin’s the ould
lady all covered wid jewels comin’?”
“Which old lady? What on earth do you mean, Patsy?”
“Ould Lady Molyneux,” replied Patsy; “I’ve heard tell she’s all stuck
over wid jewels like the plums on a puddin’!”
“She’s coming to-morrow, I believe,” said Doris. “And you are not to
speak in that disrespectful way of a lady!”
“I’m not wishin’ to be disrespectful, Miss Doris; but I dhreamt last
night Paddy Murphy had broke into the house.”
“Who is he?”
“A highwayman, Miss Doris; and he had the ould lady on the floor and was
prizin’ the jewels off her wid the point of his knife same as you prize
barnacles off a rock down by the say-side.”
Lord Gawdor gave a howl of laughter. He was not in love with his Aunt
Molyneux, and the picture of her as imagined by Patsy tickled his fancy
immensely.
Patsy, seeing him laugh, grinned in a half-hearted fashion and scratched
his head.
“Miss Doris,” said he, looking up from the toes of his boots which he
had been contemplating and still grinning, not from merriment, but as if
the grin had stuck to his face and would not come off, “couldn’t you
tell the ould lady to keep away, for it’s afear’d I am that the dhrame
will come true.”
“I wish I could,” said Doris whole-heartedly; then, remembering to whom
she was speaking: “Don’t talk nonsense. It’s very wicked to be
superstitious and believe in dreams—besides, dreams always come
contrary; if you dream of a wedding some one is sure to die, and if you
dream a person is dead, it’s a sign they are going to be married——”
“I say,” said Lord Gawdor, who had climbed on to the window-seat, “come
here.”
Doris came to the window. An outside car piled with luggage was coming
across the park along the drive. On one side of the car sat the driver,
on the other a young gentleman in a Norfolk jacket and a shooting cap;
he had a pipe in his mouth.
It was the first of the expected guests.
“It’s Mr Fanshawe,” said Doris. “Isn’t he nice-looking!”
“Look, there’s two gun-cases,” said Lord Gawdor. “My eye! wonder where
his horses are?”
“He couldn’t bring his horses on the car with him,” said Doris.
“Who said he could, stupid?” replied his lordship, pushing the window
up.
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