"'Oh, thou bloomin' milk-white dove
To whom I've given my love,
Do not ever thus reprove
My consancy.
"'For if not mine, dear boy,
Oh, snowy-breasted pearl,
May I never from the fair
With life return.'
"It _ought_ to be 'girl' to rhyme with 'pearl,' but, you see, he _isn't_
a girl, so I made up 'boy' myself. Doesn't the song fit him
_beautifully_?"
The door had been left ajar; a small black nose inserted itself in the
crack with a pathetic snort.
"It is your little dog!" Herr Schmidt exclaimed. "Come in! Come in!"
He gave a great fat laugh. "Come in!"
Sheila Pat slipped to the floor.
"She's shy," she explained, and went and opened the door wide.
Kate Kearney trotted in, sleek and black, giving little scriggles of
love as she came. She rubbed herself against the Atom's legs, she
licked her hand, she lifted superlatively great innocent eyes.
"Kate Kearney, what is it you've been doin'?" the Atom said.
K.K. went into an ecstasy of adoration; she jumped and licked the Atom's
cheek, she wriggled, she ran to and fro, she gave short little whimpers,
and she turned a reproachful, widely innocent gaze upon the Atom's
suspicious countenance.
Sheila Pat laughed proudly.
"She always looks burstin' with goodness when she's been doin' somethin'
bad," she said.
"She is a beautiful little dog."
"She got first prize at the dog show, in the cocker spaniel puppy class,
an' a 'Highly Commended' in the open class."
"Ach!" said Herr Schmidt.
"Aunt Kezia doesn't like her. Molly says she would if she was a cat,
because old maids always like cats, but Sarah says she won't let her
give scraps to the poor starvin' creatures at all. Kate Kearney mostly
stays in the Stronghold with us. Denis 'gested the name. Isn't it a
good one? It's our very own room, you see, and Aunt Kezia's the enemy we
keep--" There was a jerk, a pause.
Herr Schmidt, peering across at her, saw an agonised wave of red mount
to her very brow.
"I--I think I'd better be goin' now," but she did not move.
He took a step towards her.
"Oh, oh, _please_ would you mind stayin' there?" she cried out in a
shrill little agitated voice.
He stopped abruptly.
"What is it, meine liebe?"
"You have been very kind, indeed, Mr. Hair Smitt." The Atom's
exceedingly grown-up manner precluded any more questions. "Thank you
very much. Would you mind turnin' your back a minute?"
He moved away and looked out of the window.
Sheila Pat with trembling hands turned up her skirt and grasped the
dangling petticoat beneath, but as she did it, a wicked black head
emerged from beneath the table, and wicked white teeth closed on the
flannel and pulled--pulled.
"K.K.! I'll _whip_ you! Drop it! Oh, _drop_ it, K.K.!"
But whether it was that the Atom dared not raise her voice above a
whisper, or whether K.K. just felt specially naughty--anyway, she did
not leave go.
And Sheila Pat's proud soul was filled with very real agony. With a
despairing "Please don't turn round--I'm goin'!" she fled out into the
hall, stumbling along, with K.K. and her petticoat dragging her
sideways. She sank on to the lowest stair and let her petticoat go; she
watched K.K. drag it down her legs, across the hall. He had treated her
so beautifully! He had behaved as if she were a grown-up. All had gone
so well--and what would he think of her now? A vision of Biddy
O'Regan's numerous babies trotting about with various garments dangling
about their legs rose up before her eyes. Only babies let their things
come down, the Atom thought, and she shuddered.
K.K. brought the petticoat to her with a conciliatory wag, and laid it
gently in her lap. The Atom took no notice. She was sure he had
forgotten how she had tumbled down the stairs, and now--K.K. pushed a
moist nose into her hand. "Oh, K.K., is it lovin' me you are after
_that_?" She pointed to the petticoat with a short but tragic finger.
K.K. laid a sweet head on her knee, with upturned eyes adoring.
*CHAPTER III*
"I'm getting quite fond of our Stronghold," said Nell. "That's crooked,
Denis!"
"What if it is, and you an artist! I'm not going to take the nail
out,--no, not if it's standing on its head. Isn't my thumb pathetic
pulp already?"
"_Gerrls_ can't use a hammer! _Gerrls_ always hit more thumb than
anything else!" from the foot of the step-ladder came an impish voice.
"That you, Atom?" Denis flung himself down the steps. Sheila Pat fled,
squealing, down the stairs and into the garden.
"_What_ we would have done without this room to call our own, my brain
refuses to imagine!" Nell observed.
"Wasn't it just like mother to think of it?" queried Molly, wistfully.
Nell nodded.
"And our teas! Thank goodness, Aunt Kezia desires us to have tea up
here, in case some of her friends turn up. It's something to be looked
upon as savages, after all, Mol!"
She was digging a drawing pin through a mounted photograph of a
beautiful Irish wolf hound. She touched his head softly with her finger
before she turned away. He was Denis's dog, and he had been left at
Kilbrannan with friends. She picked up a photograph of her little
chestnut mare. She stood with it in her hands, then turned suddenly and
put it away in her drawer of the table. The hound was still Denis's,
but Acushla was sold--sold to the same friends who were taking care of
the dog. Nell clinched her teeth. The other horses had been sold, too.
She gathered up a pile of photographs taken by herself and Denis, and
laid them in her drawer. For a minute the sick longing for them all,
for her home, her father and mother, gripped her and held her silent.
Then she turned to Molly.
"Hark at Sheila Pat's accent! Whose benefit is it for?"
Molly looked out at the dingy scrap of garden.
"There's that little boy in the garden next door. Denis is chasing
Sheila Pat."
They reappeared in the Stronghold, the Atom's wild little face emerging
from beneath Denis's arm, her legs and arms kicking and struggling.
Denis seized the tablecloth, hauled it off with a clatter of falling
lesson books, drawing board, pencils, and paint-box. "Hang on, Nell!
We'll toss her."
Miss Kezia, entering the room unnoticed, was surprised to find her
youngest niece bouncing in the air.
"Aunt--Ke--" With a burst of terrified laughter Molly smothered the
rest of the word.
Denis and Nell, holding the tablecloth, with Sheila Pat enthroned in its
middle, turned innocently to their aunt.
"I came," said Miss Kezia, "to see if there had been any accident."
"Won't you sit down?" suggested Denis, with a wave of his disengaged
hand toward a chair. "There's been no accident at all. What made you
think there had?"
"The noise!" It was snapped out like the click of a box being shut.
"Noise?" He looked surprised. Sheila Pat, tailor-wise in her
tablecloth, regarded Miss Kezia thoughtfully.
"May I ask," resumed her aunt, "if you are playing a game?"
"Jolly good game," Denis agreed smilingly.
"And it necessitates the smashing and throwing to the floor of--those?"
pointing majestically. "And the ruining of the tablecloth?"
"Not necessarily, Aunt Kezia; Sheila Pat's only an Atom--I don't expect
she'll tear the cloth."
"You will not have another, in any case," Miss Kezia said. A little
flush rose to Denis's brow; his mouth shut into a thin line. Then he
looked at Nell.
"Nell, amn't I right in understanding that this is _our_ cloth?"
"Quite, Denis."
"Have--" exclaimed Miss Kezia, suddenly, "have you been knocking nails
into my walls?"
"We'll pull them out," said Nell coldly, "since you object to them."
Miss Kezia actually smiled a grim little smile.
"How very Irish! What good would that do, when the holes would still be
there? It is most tiresome! It ruins the walls! It really--good
gracious! Call your dog off!--Go _away_!" Miss Kezia, red-faced,
undignified, was striving wildly to extricate her skirt from K.K.'s
teeth.
For a few moments Denis and Nell's attention was engaged elsewhere; each
was rearranging assiduously the folds of the cloth. And in the middle
of it Sheila Pat sat and chuckled softly.
Then Denis turned.
"K.K., drop it!" he said sternly, and K.K. obeyed with a sad little
wriggle.
"It's a most objectionable dog," Miss Kezia said breathlessly. "I insist
that you make no more holes in my paper!" And she marched from the
room. Denis sank on to the lounge, stuffed the cushion into his mouth,
and wildly waved his legs in the air.
The door reopened--Nell made a frantic dash at his legs. "Of course you
understand that I will not have that guinea-pig brought into the house!"
Miss Kezia said, her eyes on Denis, who at the sound of her voice
dropped the cushion and sat up with a ludicrous face of dismay.
She retired once more, and for a minute there was dead silence in the
room she had left. Then Nell fell into Denis's arms. "Oh--you
gossoon!"
On the floor, where she had been ignominiously dumped, Sheila Pat sat in
her tablecloth and hugged Kate Kearney.
Denis arose and seized her pig-tail.
"Let's attack the garden now, Atom."
Nell was looking out of the window.
"There's that pretty little lame boy next door. I'm going down to talk
to him."
"I don't want to come, thank you," Sheila Pat said to Denis.
"Eh? Why not?"
"A person," quoted the Atom, "may have reasons."
"You're a lazy Atom," said Denis, and strolled out of the room.
"The little boy's gone in," Molly observed.
The Atom slipped out of the room and downstairs after Denis. Denis sat
on an old up-turned wheelbarrow and studied a book on shorthand and the
garden alternately.
"It's a problem that requires a good deal of thought," he observed
lazily. "A back yard: Item--a patch of bare ground adorned with ten and
a half blades of grass. Item--a narrow ridge of clay running parallel
with the walls, in which flowers are presumably meant to grow. Item--a
careless mosaic of china, etc. Item--a wheelbarrow. Item--a dustbin.
Item--a diminutive Atom ready to turn it all into an elysium of sweet
flowers."
"Go on with your readin'," said the Atom, refusing to smile, and
valiantly beginning to pick up bits of china.
"The spirit is willing, but the brain is weak. I've come to a
standstill. Hulloa, K.K.'s over the wall!"
"It was a cat makin' faces at her. If that little boy's there, he'll be
very frightened."
"Why on earth should he be?"
"Oh, I know he will," with dire meaning.
Nell came dancing out into the garden with Molly.
"You're out of step, Mol! Kate Kearney, I saw you leap the wall after a
poor pussy!"
She dug her toes into the wall and looked over.
"Can you give me that wicked little black bogy?" she called.
Sheila Pat turned and trotted towards the house.
Denis, on his wheelbarrow, eyed her inquiringly.
"Where are you off to? Going to exercise the Snowy-Panted Pearl?"
The Atom refused to acknowledge the question. She always did refuse
when he miscalled her Pearl so rudely.
Over the wall Nell accepted a limp Kate Kearney from the little shy,
fair-haired boy she had accosted, and held a conversation with him.
"Nell!" came a faint voice. "Nell! I'm caught! Oh, _Nell_!"
"Someone is calling," observed Denis, from his barrow.
Nell looked round.
"It's Molly. I thought she was here. Stewart, you hear that cry? It
comes from the mouth of my sister Molly. She has a predilection for
falling into slop-pails, jamming her fingers into doors-- _Coming_!"
she sang out in response to a louder cry. "Good-bye, Stewart. Another
time you must see my littlest sister." She dropped to the ground.
Up in Molly's room she found wild confusion, and, in the midst of it,
Molly hanging out of the wardrobe.
"I'm caught, Nell! Oh, it's killing me! You might have hurried--oh!"
"Hair this time," observed Nell, untwining and pulling, while the house
echoed with Molly's screams. Her hair had caught in the hooks of a
blouse hanging on one of the pegs. They were safety hooks, which were
one of the trials of Molly's life.
When she was freed at last, Nell looked round the room littered with
boots, hats, frocks, collars.
"Whence?" she said, with a wave of her hand.
"I was looking for my thimble."
"Oh!" said Nell, expressively.
"Nell," shouted Denis, from somewhere, "come up and look at these
beastly grey collars!"
She ran up to his room. The laundress was a grievance of his.
She sat on his bed and sympathised; then she observed, "Denis, tell me
what this Pennington is like."
"Haven't I told you? I'll look a fine guy this evening in a dirty
collar!"
"'Not half a bad chap. See him mimic old Tellbridge, his uncle--simply
ripping,'" mocked she, suggestively.
He laughed. "Is that all I told you? Well, it's his chief
accomplishment. He's a little chap--very dark. I say, I told you old
Tellbridge apologised that his wife hadn't called, because she's abroad,
didn't I? He isn't a bad old chap, only he's got such a beastly pompous
manner. Pennington calls him Uncle Pom-Pom. Well, he hasn't got much of
a bargain with me!" He gave a quick sigh. "I do loathe figures, Nell!"
Then he laughed again. "Aunt Kezia has been talking to me about the
hours she expects me to keep! 'Pon my word, I believe she thinks I'm
not a day over eleven!"
At ten o'clock he came meekly home.
"Please, Aunt Kezia, I hope I'm not late?"
"I told you ten o'clock. You are punctual."
He went up to the Stronghold. He found Nell huddled over the
account-book.
"Well?" she said.
"Where's Molly?"
"Just gone to bed."
"What are you doing?"
She laughed.
"I'm _trying_ to do accounts. I've been trying more or less all the
evening."
"More foolish you! What's the use of accounts, anyway? If the money's
gone, it's gone!"
"Yes, but still--why, you see, Denis, we--we've just got to be careful
now, and I must see how our money dwindles when we never spend a
farthing! And I can't get to-day right. I come threepence short."
"Put it down to stamps."
"I do my accounts honourably!"
"I'll help you. Read out items."
"Woman with baby--india rubber--watch for boy," she enumerated glibly.
"Eh? Woman with an india rubber baby and a watchful boy? How much that
little lot?"
She was surreptitiously trying to tear a leaf from the account-book.
"Fivepence," she said, "and there was the hair ribbon for
Molly--tenpence three farthings--that is one and threepence, three
farthings, isn't it?"
He reached out a long arm and captured the book. On the leaf opposite
the items for the day, dangling, half torn out, was a pencil sketch of
Kate Kearney.
"I--I forgot," said Nell. "I really didn't know I was doing it!"
"You know it's forbidden in this book," sternly.
"Plase, your Honour, I'm sorry."
"You've got her expression splendidly. What had she been doing?"
"Eating Molly's hair-brush."
"Injured innocence. It's ripping, Nell! You'll be a second Rosa
Bonheur yet!"
She sighed.
He glanced at her quickly.
"We'll manage it somehow, old girl!"
"So we will! I'll sit on the pavement and draw pictures in vivid
chalks, as a beginning, and with my earnings--oh, up and up I'll go--"
"To the Royal Academy--a studio in South Kensington--private
exhibitions--your photograph in all the papers--interviews--'The
charming young genius who has taken the artist world by storm greeted me
with a delightful amiability. She afforded me a glimpse of a dimple and
a half. I understand that her intimate friends are treated to three
whole ones--'"
"Oh, be quiet. Tell me if I've done the adding and subtracting right."
"You have! Nell, you're getting on. Meanwhile, we're threepence short.
Three whole pennies!"
"Threepence is threepence."
He looked surprised.
"Are you sure?"
"I _can't_ think what it is."
"Account-book?" he suggested blandly.
On the occasion of Nell's first essay at accounts, she had worried and
fought and wrestled over a missing sixpence, till Sheila Pat brilliantly
bethought her of the account-book, price sixpence. Thereafter the
account-book was a family joke.
"_Chestnuts_!" said Denis, in solemn tone.
"Oh, you jewel! That's it. Now I'm beautifully right." She scribbled
it down.
He picked up a piece of stick, smooth and round. Nell glanced at it and
laughed.
"That's Molly's! She's been sitting with a bit of hair rolled round it
all the evening!"
It was the ambition of Molly's life to have waving hair like Nell's.
Secretly she tried many ways to make it curl. Pencils, pens, bits of
stick, all were requisitioned in guilty secrecy.
"Now tell me about your evening, Denis. Who was there?"
"Uncle Pom-Pom and Pennington, of course. Chap named Lancaster, and a
queer little man--Yovil, I think his name is--all grey and black
bristles. He used to be the elocution master at Pennington's school.
He writes, Nell!"
"Oh, what does he write?"
"There was an article of his in last month's _Imperial_ on Coleridge.
I'm going to get it. Pennington goes to his place every Tuesday--in the
evening; some of the other boys who used to go to his school go too, and
they talk and read and recite. No fee, you know; he just does it
because he likes it--has an idea that when you've got to leave school to
be a beastly clerk or something of that kind, you let your reading slip.
Pennington says he's cranky on Billy S.!"
"Don't be so irreverent, Denis!"
There was a pause.
"And the other--Lancaster--what is he like?"
"Decent sort of chap, I should think. Don't know much about
him--awfully quiet--hardly spoke to any one. Pennington seems to think
a lot of him. He beat me at billiards, anyway. Father's got a pot of
money. There, that's all I know."
Nell sat gazing into the fire. Suddenly her mouth dimpled.
"Denis, what do you think I've been doing this evening, beyond
accounts?"
"Daubing."
"No. I've been looking at things from Aunt Kezia's point of view."
"Oh, lor'!" he said heavily.
"And I've come to the conclusion it's pretty hard on her to have four
practically unknown relatives dumped down on her."
"We're not sacks of coals," he remonstrated, "and she offered for the
post. And we efface ourselves as much as possible. And we're rather
nice, you know."
"Sheila Pat went down to Herr Schmidt this evening, and requested him to
take her for a walk, as she felt stifled. He did take her, and Aunt
Kezia disapproved of that! Molly bet me I couldn't run up and down the
stairs six times without a pause. I did it, and she disapproved of
_that_. Poor Molly, trying to jump a hurdle,--two chairs arranged by
me,--fell and hurt herself badly. She disapproved of _that_. Certainly
she broke the chair," reflectively; "still, it seems to me Aunt Kezia
disapproves of everything."
"And on top of all that you fall to pitying her! I can't rise to your
heights at all, my dear." Nell, chin in hand, puckered her brow
thoughtfully.
"Why, you see, from her point of view we're a horrid nuisance--"
"Oh, are we, indeed? I wish Sheila Pat could hear you! Nell, if I don't
go to bed at once, you'll arrive at the point of considering our
respected aunt a martyred saint, and us the bad little imps who got her
her crown! Well, anyway, the imps are useful! For isn't it a grand
thing to be a martyr, and aren't we helping her to be one? I'm going to
bed."
"Lazy!"
"My dear, remember I am now a working man. Remember what my earnings are
to go towards--" He broke off suddenly. "Nell, why can't I write a
book or a play, and make my fortune?"
"You will soon."
He shook his head.
"I can see it's all rubbish almost as I write it. No, Nell, you'll have
to give us back Kilbrannan, alone!"
"I won't, Denis! You know you're much too conceited to let me do it.
Mustn't you have your finger in every pie? And don't speak as if it
isn't ours still! It's only let--"
"So it is!" He seized her round her waist. "We'll do it together--you
and I--turn 'em out--buy back all the horses--and meanwhile--meanwhile,
we'll economise like a couple of German Jews!"
She looked at the jar of great golden chrysanthemums, at a large box of
Fuller's chocolates he had brought them that day, and at her
account-book where the money seemed to run away so mysteriously.
"Oh," quoth Denis, "it isn't the things like that that use up the money;
it's the little things--copper here, copper there; 'Take care of the
pence and the pounds will take care of themselves,' you know. That's
sound commercial sense."
"Is it?" said Nell. "It _sounds_ all right."
"It's as right as your hand which isn't your left. I'm going to put out
the lamp."
*CHAPTER IV*
"Sarah," said Sheila Pat, "who's in the drawing-room?"
"Mrs. Barclay, miss."
"Oh!" said Sheila Pat.
"Bread and butter--cakes--best milk jug--smallest spoons--that's right."
Sarah's muttering ended with a sigh of relief.
"Sarah, are you very busy?"
"I've took the things up, miss, and now I've got to wash up the dinner
things."
"Sarah," wheedlingly, "let me help you."
"Oh, no, miss, certainly not, and you oughter be upstairs, too."
"I don't wish to be there," with dignity settling herself on the table.
"Sarah, haven't you any silver to clean now? I do like cleaning
silver."
"Oh, no, miss, and you're making yourself dirty and all!"
A pause, while Sarah bustled about and the Atom watched her.
"Sarah," sternly issued the small voice, "I inquest you to give me some
work _at once_!"
"Oh--oh, certingly, miss, yes, miss." Sarah, in a flurry, routed out
some shining pots and pans and gave them to the Atom to dust. Sheila
Pat took them and examined them carefully. There was a long silence,
while Sarah made up the fire and left the room to fill the coal box.
When she returned she saw the Atom sitting in stiff idleness beside her
pots and pans.
"What, done them already, miss! Well, you _'ave_ been quick; and how
nice and bright you've made them look, to be sure!"
The Atom fixed her with a stony eye.
"I haven't touched them," said she.
Sarah collapsed in dire confusion.
"I may wear short dresses," resumed the Atom, coldly, "my fam'ly is
resisting about that,--but I am not a _baby_, Sarah Jane Jones."
Meekly and in awe, Sarah provided her with real work in the drying of
cups and saucers and plates. The Atom unbent over her rubbing.
"Have you any brothers, Sarah?"
"Yes, miss, two."
"How old are they?"
"One's three and t'other four and a 'alf, miss."
"Have you any sisters, Sarah?"
"Yes, miss, three."
"How old are they?"
"Two and five and seving, miss. I'm a long way the eldest in the
fambly. There's three died between me and Gladys. Father, 'e died
eighteen months back, too."
"Your mother has had a lot of trouble, Sarah."
"Yes, miss, and she's mostly ailing."
"Would she like some cough medicine, do you think? You see I've got some
in a bottle upstairs. I didn't use it all."
"Thank you, miss. She takes in sewing when she's able, but they pay
that bad! Threepence for a blarse! Did you ever, now?"
The Atom fidgeted uncomfortably.
"I don't _quite_ know what a blarse is, Sarah, not _quite_, you see."
"Why, a bodice as don't fit, miss, just 'angs loose, and you pull it in
round the waist with a belt or somethink."
"Oh!" said the Atom, recognising "blouse" now, but too polite to
explain.
"No," pursued Sarah, "_I'm_ the worker of the fambly!"
The Atom eyed her gravely.
"You're not _very_ big and strong, are you?" she queried doubtfully.
"Oh, there's a lot of work in me, miss, more'n you'd think. I can go on
and on, you see. Why," proudly, "lots o' times when my back's just
aching all over and my legs and feet too, I can work just as well as
_hever_!"
"That's spunk, Sarah," said Denis's voice round the door.
"Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Denis!" Sarah, in her confusion, let fall a plate.
"Oh!" she cried, "four pieces! Oh!" She wrung her hands.
Denis laughed.
"My fault, Sarah; put it down to me."
But the poor little maid-of-all-work had no smile left in her; her sharp
little face was puckered and drawn into ludicrous lines of woe; tears
stood in her pale eyes. "'Alf a crown at least!" she moaned beneath her
breath. "I'd never match it under!"
Denis glanced sharply at her. "What do you mean? You talk as if you
will have to pay for it!"
"So I do, sir! Ten pounds--washing done out--pay your own breakages--no
beer--no followers," she rattled off glibly.
"Do you mean Aunt Kezia makes you pay for everythin' you break?"
interposed the Atom.
"Yes, miss!"
There was scorn in Denis's eye; he drew a half crown from his pocket.
"I broke it, Sarah," he said gently. "Would you mind getting the new
one for me? You'd bargain better than I should. Come on, Atom,
everyone's asking for you."
Sheila Pat held back.
"Is the goody-goo up there, too?"
"The what?"
"The little lame boy."
"No; only his mother. Hurry up!"
They left Sarah half weeping over his magnificent kindness. Denis
little knew how from that moment he was a young god--a prince in a fairy
tale--a hero--to the romantic Sarah.
Up in the drawing-room a stiff little party sat nursing empty cups. In
vain Mrs. Barclay tried to unstiffen it. Her eyes met Nell's, and a
gleam of amusement shone in them before she discreetly veiled them
beneath decorous lids.
Miss Kezia was cross. She had been taken unawares. With a queer kind of
heavy hospitality, she liked to know when a visitor was coming, that she
might have cakes and scones of all sorts freshly baked. To-day she had
not known, and there was nothing but bread and butter and half a dozen
small cakes. So she sat, stiffly disapproving, and refused to unbend.
Sheila Pat marched in, calm and cool, greeted Mrs. Barclay with her most
pronounced accent, took her seat upon a chair, pulled down her skirt,
and surveyed the room.
"I have a little boy not much older than you," Mrs. Barclay began
pleasantly.
"Sure I'm knowin' that already."
"He wants to know you very badly."
Dead silence.
"I hope you will be friends--you and he."
The Atom wriggled on her chair; then,
"I don't care for children much, thank you; that is," her hopeless
honesty impelled her, "not some children!"