"I saw old Lancaster's face suddenly. He's dangerous. His scowl's
enough to turn the sunshine into a black frost. But he won't back out
now. He's too jolly obstinate. You should have seen his face when
Yovil told us his sister had persuaded him to make the evening a bigger
affair and invite ladies too. And his 'naughty little cuss words,'
Atom! What d'you think he said about your sex too? He said: 'What
meddlers women are! Why must they have their fingers in everyone's
pie?' Why, James there would be more gallant!"
Sheila Pat did not respond to his nonsense. She said sombrely, "I'm
comin' to hear you speak, Denis O'Brien."
"Sorry, old girl, but the invitation's only for Nell, you know."
She shut her mouth obstinately.
Denis approached Jim.
"Jim, what have you got in your mouth?"
The monkey, in a flutter of fear, opened his mouth and shot out a piece
of india rubber, a small tube of paint, a button off the chair, and a
thimble. He had a habit of putting things in his mouth and carrying
them about with him. Denis had taught him already to give them up. As
the thimble rolled on to the chair, Jim sprang away, up the curtains,
and sat glowering down from the curtain rod.
"He asked Aunt Kezia to come," Sheila Pat said.
"But when he heard that--ahem--unfortunately she was engaged for that
evening, he said he hoped I'd bring my sister myself,--only mentioned
one sister, you see. Fact is, he's full up--afraid his drawing-room
won't hold them all."
The Atom stared out of the window. Jim, having, with a good deal of
ingenuity, extricated a curtain hook, dropped it on her head. She shook
it off impatiently. Jim watched, peering impishly over the curtain
rail.
"I'm awfully sorry, asthore,"--Denis pulled her pig-tail
lovingly--"shall I put you in my pocket?"
"I will hear you speak," the Atom said.
"Well, I'll recite my speech to you and Jim here. Nell was saying she
wishes you'd take her place."
"Don't be silly, Denis."
A measured step approached the door.
"Aunt Kezia--and Jim not in his cage!" he ejaculated, and strode to the
door.
He glanced back at Jim--a dim little outline in the curtain. "If only
he stays there!"
He swung out on to the landing, nearly upsetting Miss Kezia.
"I wish to see Molly," she said.
"Molly? She's not in there, Aunt Kezia."
"One of my boots is missing. I conclude that Molly, for some purpose of
her own, has taken it." She moved towards him and the door.
"Don't you trouble," he besought her; "you go and finish getting ready.
I'll find Molly and ask her."
"I prefer to look for myself."
She entered the Stronghold and gazed around.
Jim peered inquisitively at her over the curtain top. Denis frowned at
him and shook his head.
"There is my boot!" Miss Kezia dragged a large and solid boot from
beneath a chair. "Well!" she ejaculated, and the amount of indignation
she managed to compress into that one word was terrific. She held up
the boot--there was not a button left on it. But on the floor, ranged
in a neat little line, sat ten black buttons. The absolute regularity
of the line, the precision and neatness, somehow seemed to aggravate the
offence.
"I--I would like to _whip_ Molly!"
Miss Kezia's accents were not so judicial as usual; there was a hurried,
almost a pathetic, note about them. She was at a loss. "I will find
Molly," she said with dire meaning, and stalked towards the door.
"I'll find her for you!" Denis exclaimed, and brushed past her. When
the door was shut, Sheila Pat, with a smile for what had occurred, went
back to the window and her thoughts.
Jim crept stealthily down the curtain and across to the boot buttons,
which had been scattered by Miss Kezia's angry toe. He picked them up,
one by one, and laid them in a neat little row again. Then he sat and
regarded them with his head on one side.
Sheila Pat's solitude was invaded presently by a very injured and
tearful Molly.
"She thinks I'm mad! And he isn't worth it! I'm to--to sew them all on
myself! I can't!"
Sheila Pat rose suddenly and left the room. She went into her bedroom..
It was a bright, cold day with a brilliant sun sparkling on a
fast-disappearing frost. But Sheila Pat donned a dark blue raincoat.
She looked down with satisfaction on the neat little ankles and feet
that were all that emerged from that end. From the other end, above an
intensely sporting turned-up collar, her small face looked out with a
weighty seriousness. She put on a dark blue peaked sort of cap, also
rain proof, slipped downstairs, and left the house. With her hands in
big pockets, she walked staidly down the road, a quaint little
exceedingly tailorish figure. She stopped to accost a grey cob in a
milkman's cart, and on the milkman's appearing from a house fell into
conversation with him. Suddenly she broke out, appealingly young and
eager in spite of her coat:--
"Might I--oh, _please_ might I get in and hold the reins while you're in
the houses?"
He appeared to hesitate.
"It--" a little choke jostled the words--"it's weeks and weeks since
I've held the reins!"
The milkman glanced dubiously down at the very small Atom, then at his
quiet old cob, and assented. As he politely helped her in he felt the
little tremor that shook her, but he did not understand it. He smiled
surprisedly at the workmanlike way in which she gathered up the reins.
He nodded kindly into the suddenly joyous face uplifted to his. Sheila
Pat let out a great big breath and clucked softly to the cob.
"Plenty of work in him yet," she observed conversationally. "Pretty
shrewd, too," with a proud little laugh as the cob stopped outside a
house.
"He knows the houses I supply as well as I do, miss."
On his rejoining her, "Any special fad?" she asked.
"Well, he's steady-going as a rule, miss,--don't mind motors, or trains,
or stone-crushers a bit,--but it's a funny thing he can't stand
wheelbarrers! Shies at 'em quite skittish."
Sheila Pat listened with absorbed interest. The milkman came to the
last house on his list, and she drove him in style to the dairy. The
conversation on the way was strictly horsey. As they drew up she
mentioned where she was going.
"Mr. Yovil? Oh, we supply him. I'll take you there, miss; it's close
by."
So it came about that Mr. Mark Yovil, looking forth from his study
window, beheld his milkman driven to his gate by a very small and very
dignified driver, who, after bidding the cob a lingering and loving
farewell, shook hands with the milkman, and entered Mr. Yovil's gate.
A few minutes later a rigidly grave maid announced: "Miss Sheila
Patricia Kathleen O'Brien," and the Atom walked in.
"How-do-you-do? I am the sister of Denis O'Brien."
Mr. Yovil took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief,
then he fixed them on the brown and bumpy bridge of his nose, and
regarded her through them.
"I'm sure I'm very pleased to see you," he said in a particularly
charming voice. Sheila Pat would never have dreamt how exceedingly curt
and cutting that voice could be. "Pray sit down."
"Thank you."
There was a pause, while he watched her pulling down her long coat over
her ankles.
"You see, I've come on business," she said presently, looking up
straight into his face.
"Oh, indeed. I'm afraid," with a comical shake of his bristly head,
"I'm not much good on business matters."
"It's not about money at all. I--" there was just a tiny pause--"I want
to know if you--if you would engage me as an extra hand on next
Wednesday."
"An--extra--hand?"
A little pink signal of distress lest he laugh at her flamed in her
cheek.
"You see," the staid voice grew hurried, "I'm rather small for my age.
I'm not really very young. I'm quite six and fourteen weeks, and I--I'm
'ceptionally strong. I could wash the plates and knives and forks,
and--and run errings--and fill the water jugs. I'd do anythin', and I
wouldn't want any wages. The only stippleation I'd make is that I might
listen in a corner to Denis's speech."
"It's very kind of you," the dark eyes behind the glasses were twinkling
a good deal, "but I really do not need an--er--extra hand."
There was a pause. Sheila Pat swallowed twice, quite loudly.
"P'raps," tremulous hope sounded in her voice, "p'raps you'd like me to
show people to their seats?"
"N-no," he said slowly, "I really don't think there's any office I need
filling."
He stared distressed at the woeful face of Sheila Pat. He polished his
glasses with a queer nervousness, this quick-tempered little man before
whom so many grown-ups had trembled.
"I--" with a trembling burst of desperation, "I could fill the coal
skuttles!"
He came over and, drawing up a chair, sat down beside her.
"Will you tell me why you want to--er--fulfil all these menial offices?"
he asked gently.
She slid off her chair.
"It was to hear Denis, you see. Good-bye, Mr. Yovil."
"But--why not come with your brother?"
"Nell's comin', and you're full up. Molly doesn't want to, anyway,
because there'd be so many boys starin'."
"I shall be very much hurt if you don't come, too."
A little flush rose to her cheeks.
"I'm not wishin' to intrude, thank you; I wasn't askin' for _that_!
Only, you see, I thought if I could be an extra hand, that would do."
He took the hand extended to him, and with his other rubbed his brow
wildly. He realised that nothing would induce his small companion to
come on the Wednesday merely as a visitor. He stared at her in comical
distress.
"Good-bye," he said absently.
As she reached the door he gave a jubilant shout.
"Could you be my Social Prompter, do you think?"
She turned back.
"Yes," she said. "What is it?"
He smiled.
"Come and sit down again. There, that's right. Oh, I shall want a
Social Prompter that evening!" he gave a quizzical little chuckle. "Now
listen, my dear. I'm a rude man. Oh, yes, I am," as she politely
refuted his statement. "A good many ladies have told me so. I never
speak to the people I should speak to, and I speak to those I shouldn't.
Well, there will be a good many ladies present on Wednesday, and I must
speak to them all and I must say just about as many words to one as the
other. Now, my sister was to have been hostess, and she gives me a sign
whom I'm to accost next, and so on. But her little boy has the measles,
and she won't come up to town. Do you see?"
"Oh, yes!" Sheila Pat's face was intent. "I'll turn up my nose at the
ladies you've spoken to, and smile at the ones you haven't."
"Well--hardly that. The ladies whom you turned your nose up at might be
hurt, you know. Let me see, now. I think if you come quietly up to me
every now and then, and suggest what group I shall join-- How will that
do?"
"Yes," said Sheila Pat. She put out her hand and gave his arm an
ecstatic little squeeze.
"I did want to see Denis get the prize."
"But perhaps he won't."
"Oh, yes, he will. He's Irish, you see. Good-bye. I'm very much
'bliged."
"Not at all. It's I who should say that. I'm coming out. We'll start
together."
With infinite tact he invented the need of tobacco, because he knew
there was a tobacconist's near the top of Henley Road. He never smoked
any but a particular brand that he procured at a particular shop, and
that evening his man was gratified by the present of a tin of tobacco.
He bade the Atom good-bye at the top of her road, and looking after the
sedate little back, he smiled. Such an immense dignity was there in
that small back view of Sheila Pat that it was difficult to associate
her with the severe scolding to which she knew she was walking.
*CHAPTER XII*
"Four half crowns is ten bob. Sarah, if ever I catch you carrying that
heavy coal-box up to our room again, I'll give you a month's warning and
pack you off without a day's notice!
"Nell," entering the Stronghold, "to-day is Saturday. Old Tellbridge,
gazing at my interesting countenance, pale from overwork and perhaps
tired of my unfortunate method of making two and two tot up to five or
three, let me off early. The pit of a theatre is peopled nowadays by a
most respectable and worthy--"
"A theatre? Oh, Denis! Which? What?"
"My dears, do not shout. 'Tis vulgar. You've heard of a play called
'Monsieur Beaucaire.' Softly--softly. And James, there are
no--er--butterflies in K.K.'s coat, I assure you. Yes, Atom, we _are_
going! Yes, we must start _at once_! Lancaster says it's going very
strong. We'll have to wait outside ages. As our aunt is not at home, I
would suggest a raid on the kitchen, and then flight."