Chapter X: Part 10

Protests were sent and brought up to the Stronghold that evening. An abashed and blushing Sarah brought them, and an austere and angry Miss Kezia sent them.

Sheila Pat marched downstairs, and knocked at Herr Schmidt's door.

"Kom in!"

Sheila Pat went in. Her eyes were very bright, her pig-tail was very crooked.

"Herr Schmidt," she said, "please will you walk out with Aunt Kezia?"

Herr Schmidt's big face grew redder than its usual red wont. It chanced that he understood the meaning of "walking out."

"Ach!" he ejaculated.

Sheila Pat eyed him severely.

"Sarah says if you're walking out with a young man you must always go when he asks you to," she explained. Her voice rose, "Oh, Herr Schmidt, you could _always_ ask Aunt Kezia when we want to get rid of her, and," impishly she glowed, "she could never say no!"

"I'm sorry--" he began.

She urged strenuously. "She's very worthy! She gives all her old clothes to charity. And Sarah says she's very just, and she'd make your wages go a very long way. Sarah says that's a great thing."

He began to chuckle, but checked it in his distress at having to disappoint her. She came down at last to a humble, "Well, will you please just take her for a walk _now_?"

She returned, chastened and severe, to the Stronghold. A visit a few minutes later, from Miss Kezia herself, lent an added intensity to the small figure that flung itself desperately at Mr. Mark Yovil, who called to leave some book for Denis.

"Take her away! Walk out with her! She's a wet counterpane on us!"

Mark Yovil, known for his obstinacy, his firm will, was weak where this Atom was concerned.

"I'm going to a lecture," he declared hesitatingly.

"Take her!"

"But, my dear, it's nothing that would interest her. She would not come--"

"Oh, _please_! 'Magine us--up there--all quiet and still like dead mice! And our letter-day! It--it's really very sad!"

He looked down into her upturned face, into the wild entreaty of her great eyes.

Miss Kezia came into the hall and greeted him, surprised.

He turned to her, and asked her if she would be so very kind--his sister had lost her cook quite suddenly--not very experienced--advice--

Miss Kezia presently had gone upstairs to don her bonnet, her one weakness, love of giving advice, enveloping her in a cloud of complacency.

"Now, small Sheila Pat, am I not a true friend? But, mark this, I have told no falsehoods." He took her on his knee. "My sister has lost her cook. She is inexperienced. She does want advice," he twinkled there; "I don't know that it's the advice of your estimable aunt that she particularly requires, but we'll hope so. Your aunt once whacked my sister's baby on the back when it had swallowed a spoon or fork or knife or something of the kind. Perhaps it was the soup-tureen. Well, now, I shall have to leave your aunt in one room while I explain to my sister. You'll have to love me for ever for this, Sheila Pat."

A little later, and noise echoed with joyful abandon through the house.

When Ted bade them good night, he said hesitatingly:--

"I say, Nell--er--"

"Say on!" she encouraged him.

"You don't think--I mean--well, you won't get thinking--er--will you?"

"Oh, Ted, why? Have you noticed any grey hairs yet?" She put up her hands to her hair.

He smiled.

"I mean--you know--"

"By Jove, if she does know, they didn't divide the supply of brains between us equally," Denis observed.

"I only mean that I don't want you to--to get thinking that--you know you said before that I looked as if I were thinking of something nice for you--well, you won't think I was, will you?"

"Oh, indeed, I will now! Denis, can't you see there's a secret somewhere? Oh, how lovely! Ted, I do love secrets. Is it something _very_ nice?"

He looked into her teasing face with an expression of almost ludicrous dismay.

"I--wish you wouldn't!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped laughing.

"Well, I won't!" she said. "I'm quite sure there's nothing nice going to happen anywhere or any time, and it'll be all the more a surprise, won't it? Oh, Ted, I didn't mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was all fun, all smoke--"

"'There's no smoke without a fire,'" Denis told the ceiling.

"Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined.

Ted still looked worried. His good nights were absent. When he had gone, Nell observed thoughtfully:--

"I wonder what it is! Oh, I hope we won't have to wait long!"

*CHAPTER XXXII*

Down the stairs flew Nell, out into the street, up to a banana barrow, a boy, and a puppy.

"Could you lend him to me for a while?"

The boy eyed her suspiciously. There was not much ground for suspicion, since it was hardly likely she could be contemplating theft; the puppy, though fascinating, was obviously incapable of proclaiming what breed he was intended by nature to represent. Moreover Nell, in a long pinafore and hatless, could scarcely run away with him. It was merely from force of habit that the boy eyed her suspiciously. The puppy was more discerning. He welcomed her as a long and ardently looked for friend; he turned ecstatic somersaults over her feet; then stood up, and tore at her pinafore with wild, soft little paws. She picked him up.

"May I have him? I want to paint him."

The owner of the bananas, for whom the boy and the puppy were waiting, reappeared. He was quite a gallant gentleman, and assured Nell he would be pleased to let her have the puppy for "a _h_our, miss," he said with a good deal of effect. "And in a _h_our I shall be back this way, and will fetch 'im if convenient."

Nell smuggled the puppy into the house and up to the Stronghold beneath her pinafore.

He started the _h_our by persisting in looking upon Kate Kearney as a butt, provided by Providence, for his especial benefit. He thought her a tremendously funny joke and the more K.K. aired her dignity, the funnier he thought her. He rolled over in uncontrollable mirth, kicking up impertinent little legs right beneath her nose; he turned somersaults over her staid body; he frisked up to her in ridiculous boxing attitudes; he slapped her face, and he jeeringly incited her over and over again to "come on."

But K.K. refused to "come on." She was furiously jealous of the unaristocratic little mongrel who had suddenly invaded her precincts. She took refuge in a hurt dignity; she turned her head away at his approach with an unmistakable suggestion. The puppy was not hurt; he had, together with his dirt and his plebeian origin, a useful thick-skinned philosophy.

K.K. retired to a corner, back to audience, and Nell tried to sketch the puppy. When held by Molly, he howled so pathetically that he procured his release, which was exactly what he meant to do. Thereupon he licked all available hands and waddled back to Kate Kearney. As interludes to his worrying of her, he tugged a great hole into the table-cloth and upset Nell's paint-water; he managed to get a pencil stuck into his mouth, and screamed with terror; he, perhaps, after all, and in spite of his plebeian philosophy, somewhat affected by K.K.'s suggestively averted nose, essayed a bath in her drinking-pan. He upset the pan, and his own feelings; dripping and whimpering at the shock of the water, he ran round the room, and chose a wet oil-painting of Nell's against which to dry himself. The result was bad for the painting, and for the puppy, too. Adorned with patches of green and blue, he waxed pathetic, sat down with a disconcerting suddenness, and put his head on one side.

Nell exclaimed, "I can't give him back like that!" and had resort to turpentine.

All the puppy's instincts arose and defied her. He wriggled and kicked and howled, and in the midst of it Sheila Pat appeared with Jim on her arm, and the information that Aunt Kezia had returned home. The puppy was released. The Atom put Jim down, and ran to him delightedly. But a change had come o'er the puppy. On the floor Jim O'Driscoll sat, lazily picking the shell from a nut. He took no notice of the puppy; his air of complete indifference was positively insulting. The puppy stood for a minute, petrified, then he pranced a little closer, and waited. Jim scratched his left ear and ruminated. The puppy barked. Jim scratched his right ear and ruminated further. The puppy made a nervous dash at him, and fled with his tail between his legs. Jim drew in the foot that the puppy had touched and went on shelling his nut. There was a pause, then the puppy approached within a yard of the blase little figure on the floor and barked. They tried to stop him, but that puppy refused to be stopped; he had a good deal to say, and he meant to say it. That the object of the rude things he was saying gave not the slightest heed to him merely aggravated his eloquence to a louder pitch.

Molly thrust her head round the door. "Aunt Kezia is coming!"

Nell seized the puppy and poked him into the bottom shelf of the cupboard. Sheila Pat dropped Jim's cage behind the sofa, picked Jim up, poked him into it, tried to fasten the door, and Miss Kezia entered the room. There was a dead silence while she gazed about and took in every detail of disorder down to a dropped match.

"Ow--yow--yow--_yo--o--ow_!"

A long and distressful wail arose from the cupboard.

Now it happened that Kate Kearney had so far foregone her dignity as to approach the cupboard to dab at it with a triumphant and insulting paw.

"There it is again!" Miss Kezia was wrathful, but there was also an anxious glint in her eye. "What is the matter with the dog? Is it ill?"

Nell, fascinatedly watching the putting forth of a stealthy brown arm from beneath the sofa, in the direction of Sheila Pat's shoe buttons, responded with an irrepressible little laugh.

"I don't see anything to laugh at, Eileen! I am afraid you are very foolish and frivolous for your age."

"Ow--yow--yow--yo--o--o--oo--_ow_!"

The final "ow" was a veritable triumph of hideous nerve shattering. Miss Kezia's voice rose angrily: "I believe it is going mad! Or has distemper! I was foolish ever to allow it in my house! I hate dogs! It will have to be sent away if it's ill!"

The brown paw had reached and seized a shoe button. Sheila Pat was kicking frantically. The paw darted back.

"Oh, no--he--she isn't ill, Aunt Kezia--she's quite well--she's been mad--I mean, had distemper, already--oh, I--I think I'm rather m-muddley this morning--"

"I hope you're not hysterical, Eileen! You are really astonishingly foolish! As for the dog--"

K.K. had turned; her head was now facing Miss Kezia. Nell recognised the fact that the next howl could not, even by Miss Kezia, be put down to her. For a moment she thought of hustling her aunt from the room; but the detection of the puppy merely meant anger, punishment, a letter to Australia. They could face that, and Jim's arm had disappeared. They could not put up with his banishment.

There was a sudden and portentous silence in the cupboard.

Miss Kezia had a few more remarks to make. She made them. Once she deviated from the main theme of noise and general untidiness, lured by a rustle in the cupboard, on to mice. She declared that the kitchen was overrun by mice, and all because they had wantonly bought and let loose three in her house. She was going to buy new traps, as something had evidently gone wrong with the springs of hers. Twice she had found the cheese gone and the mouse, too!

Sheila Pat sat and gazed down thoughtfully at the forefinger of her right hand; a small smile flickered at the corners of her lips. The finger was rough and red. She wondered would it be possible to grease the lock of the kitchen door. It was not the pain she minded so much as the risk attached to the noise the slow turning of a stiff key makes at four or five o'clock in the morning. At the moment of her musing a determined little hand seized again on her shoe; fingers picked at a button. Sheila Pat kicked. Now, as a rule, Jim O'Driscoll was easily cowed--easily induced to retire. A frowning shake of the head had hitherto been sufficient to keep him still, in an attitude of petrified thought, for several minutes at a time. Apparently a backward kick, gentle because Sheila Pat could not, even for his own welfare bring herself to make it otherwise, had lost its power of petrification; anyhow Jim refused to abandon his tenacious hold upon her shoe button. Sheila Pat wriggled her foot out of the shoe; it disappeared immediately. Meanwhile Miss Kezia talked. She had never considered herself, or been considered by others, a talkative woman. When she left the Stronghold, there were worried lines about her face; she moved her lips in an irritated manner. It was irksome to her to be obliged to talk so much; it outraged Nature, and added to the irritation consequent on the O'Briens' misdemeanours. But she considered it her duty to talk, so she did it. And no one was grateful.

Sheila Pat rescued her button from Jim's cheek, and Nell opened the cupboard. The puppy certainly looked very charming. He lay in a nest of oats, biscuits, ink, and torn paper; a long paint-brush stuck rakishly out of the corner of his mouth. It was perhaps his expression that was so particularly charming. He had feasted on biscuits; he had tasted the flavours of oats, ink, and paper. He had had a meal to his taste, and now he was sleepy. He looked up at Nell a little mischievously and palpably with a supreme content with life. He was sleepy, and willing to be petted. That he was adorned still with patches of paint to which he had added smears of ink in no way detracted from his adorableness.

Nell said, "Oh, you bad puppy!"

She picked him up and hugged him.

*CHAPTER XXXIII*

Nell, carrying Jim O'Driscoll upstairs beneath her pinafore, nearly fell down at the sudden loud rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat that echoed through the house.

Sarah came running to open the door. They peeped over the balusters; Ted dashed in, up the stairs, and into them.

"You seem to be in a hurry," Denis suggested.

"Er--no--"

He stood silent.

"Police after you, old man? We'll hide you. Get into Jim's cage, and they won't know the difference!"

Nell was looking at Ted.

She said quietly, "What is it, Ted?"

"Oh--coming out? Nice day--"

A snort came from the direction of the Atom's bedroom:

"Only fog so thick that a person can't see an inch in front of her! And whichever way you look, you see nothing but mud and mud! But sure 'tis a nice day for London!"

Nell's eyes had met Ted's; she understood.

"Molly, go and put on your things. I'll get ready in a minute."

She led the way into the Stronghold. She turned and faced him.

"What is it?"

But he had grown suddenly uncomfortable.

"I hope you won't think--er--that I've been meddling," he said, with the slight drawl Nell understood so well now.

"Never!" she said. "Go on."

"Well, you might. O.B. told me about those Reve d'or shares--" He paused.

Denis nodded.

Nell put her hand out suddenly, and rested it heavily on the table.

"What about them?" she said.

Ted spoke quickly, giving the heart of what he had to say.

"The governor says--'Hold on--don't sell.'"

There was a little pause. Nell's face had gone quite white.

"He--means?" she said.

Ted glanced at her, and away again.

"It may mean nothing--of course, you can't always tell--"

"No, no! We know that," Denis broke in impatiently. "What made your father say it?"

"He's out there, you know--South Africa. He's got no end of a head. And he's a shareholder. I asked him about them in a letter some time ago. He wrote last week saying he believed they weren't as bad as he'd thought, but he couldn't be sure yet--"

"That was the night our Australian letters had come," Nell said.

He nodded.

"Just now I got a cablegram--saying, 'Hold on, don't sell.'"

He paused.

"He may be making a mistake," he said slowly. "The shares may not go up--don't reckon on it--" He stopped.

"We--we can't help it, Ted," Nell said shakily.

"No."

He walked over to the window and looked out. There was a little silence. Then suddenly she laughed out, an excited, wild little laugh.

"Oh, I _know_ it's true! I _know_ it is! We shall go home--Denis, don't you _feel_ it? Ted, it's all you--all you, Teddie! You'll come with us. You'll climb the hills with us--you'll love our home--" Her voice broke.

Ted grew very red; he turned his back on her, and spoke, in a tone of elaborate unconcern, to Denis.

"Thought you might come round to Bumpus's, old man, with me, about that book--"

"Oh, hang Bumpus! Hang the book!" Denis interpolated.

Nell's charming face, laughing, was poked suddenly close to Ted's.

"I'm not going to cry, Teddie! D'you think I'd repay you like that? And I won't even try to thank you--"

"Nothing to thank me for," he interposed.

"Oh, no, it's nothing to hear that we're going back to Kilbrannan soon," observed Denis.

"Don't be such a fool, O.B.!" Ted turned on him angrily. "You're not a baby! I tell you, those shares may never pay another dividend!"

"Oh, Teddie!"

The woeful change in her face made him add weakly:--

"But I've never known the Pater to make a mistake over that sort of thing--"

"Oh, _Teddie_!"

She was radiant again. She started talking; her voice was breathless, almost a song of joy.

Ted said heavily, "It's an awful responsibility."

She stopped in the middle of a laugh.

"Anyway--in any case--" she said, "you--oh, how good you are, Ted!"

"Good Heavens!" he ejaculated. "Why don't you put me up on a pedestal and worship me?"

He spoke with strong irritation.

"Oh, how rude you are! You English are queer! Denis can do with any amount of gratitude."

"Well, I'm not Denis," he grumped. "Your father's not likely to sell out, is he?"

"No, no one'd buy the shares, you know," Denis replied confidently.

But Ted had inherited somewhat of his father's business faculty.

"Don't be an ass, O.B.!" he ejaculated. "Some chap might scent that they're likely to go up, and offer to buy them of your governor."

"Oh, Denis, and dad would sell them for _nothing_!" Nell cried. "Oh, what shall we do? He'd never suspect--he thinks they're worth nothing. Ted, tell us what to do!"

"We must cable to him," Denis put in. "Where's my hat? I'm off!"

"Oh, do wait for me. Do let me come, too!"

She fled into her bedroom. She dragged out a coat. Sheila Pat was folding up her nightgown.

"Are you goin' out?" she demanded.

"Yes. Find me a hat, there's a sweet."

Sheila Pat crawled under the bed, and dived into a hatbox.

"Where are you goin'? I'll come, too."

Nell dissembled badly.

"Oh, we--we're only going just out--for a little while. Give me a hat, Atom."

Sheila Pat handed it to her in silence; she studied Nell's superlatively guilty face with calm disapproval.

"Why don't you own up that you're doin' somethin' secret?" she queried disdainfully.

"Oh, don't be silly, Atom! Oh, why _won't_ my hat go on?"

"I'm comin' too," Sheila Pat said, and she smiled a little triumphant smile.

"Oh!" said Nell.

Sheila Pat went to the wardrobe, and lifted down her coat. Nell kicked one of her boots beneath the chest of drawers.

"I can see what you're doin'," said Sheila Pat, calmly.

Nell began to laugh.

"You can come if you're ready to start when we are, but we won't wait," she said, and ran out of the room.

A cold little voice pursued her.

"I was only pertendin'; I never intrude where I'm not wanted."

Nell hardened her heart. She burst into the Stronghold.

"Do come! Oh, every moment's precious!"

As they went downstairs Denis said, "Lancaster's been pointing out that of course we may be advising the Pater quite wrong--"

"How, Denis? Oh, _how_?" She wrinkled her brows anxiously.

"The shares mayn't go up, you see."

"Oh, that!" she cried relieved. "Yes, I know."

"But, by telling him to hold on, we should stop his selling if he got a chance and if they don't go up--oh, you see, don't you?"

She nodded.

They let themselves out into the street in silence.

"I wanted you to understand," Denis said.

"Yes."

She looked down abstractedly at her thin house-slippers, which she had forgotten to change.

"I want to send the cablegram," she said. "I want to take the risk."

"That's all right. So do I."

"It's four and tenpence a word to Melbourne," observed Ted, prosaically. "What shall you say?"

"'Hold on to Reve d'or shares,' I think," Denis said.

"'Don't sell' would be a word less," Nell suggested. "'Do not,'" Ted amended. "You mustn't put 'don't' in a telegram."

'"Hold on to' is more emphatic," Denis opined.

On the way back Nell said hesitatingly:--

"Denis, do you think it'll frighten them dreadfully to get a cablegram from us?"

"Only for a second, and it can't be helped, worse luck!"

"We won't tell Molly or the Atom, will we?"

"No. We'll wait. It would drive the Atom mad to wait."

"Yes." She looked as if she thought it might drive her mad, too.

When she and Denis were alone in the Stronghold that night, she observed elatedly, and with considerable confidence, "And we'll be able to manage so beautifully, because we've had such practice in economising lately."

He nodded.

"We'll live on potatoes, old girl! I must say I prefer to economise on praties rather than on porridge."

"I've been thinking it all out. We'll have to be very careful, of course, but what does it matter--what does it matter? I'll sweep and clean and groom the horses! I'll have one dress a year--oh, Denis! Denis! I'm all in a wuzzle. I'm so happy that--"

"Let's go out! Come along. I shall burst if I don't."

"We'll find a quiet square and _run_!" she cried.

It was ten o'clock. At eleven o'clock they remembered that they would be locked out. They returned and threw small stones at Herr Schmidt's window. He let them in.

"Ach," he exclaimed, looking at Nell, "you make my dry heart glad!"

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

Miss Kezia entered the dining room.

Molly, hastily and with a very red face, slipped the sheet of paper on which she had been writing beneath the blotting paper. She looked up, and the giggle that had started to her lips died away.

"Oh! Oh, can I do anything for you, Aunt Kezia?" She jumped up and kicked over her chair.

Miss Kezia replied stiffly that she required nothing from her. She looked at her thoughtfully.

"I suppose it was you who put my everyday bonnet into the wrong box?" she queried.

"I--oh, was it the wrong box? I--I'm very sorry--"

"And it was you who sewed a black button on my glove, while the others are white, I suppose?"

"I didn't think it would matter--"

"And may I ask where you have hidden my keys?"

"I--I haven't touched them!" Eagerly she seized on the small bit of relief. "I haven't seen them."

"You surprise me!" Miss Kezia said, with a strong inflexion of sarcasm in her tone. "Hadn't you better pick up that chair?"

Molly stooped and set it erect; she blinked back tears.

Miss Kezia said: "You are a very peculiar girl, Molly. I should be obliged if you would leave my things alone. You puzzle me, but I understand that you mean well."

Molly's downcast face lightened. Impulsively she burst out, "Oh, thank you, aunt--_auntie_!"

"I," said Miss Kezia, "object to pet names!"

She walked from the room, leaving a scarlet and abashed niece behind her.

She went into Herr Schmidt's room to see that Sarah had dusted it thoroughly. She found Sheila Pat sitting at the table, with paper, pens, and ink of Herr Schmidt's before her.

"What are you doing in here, Sheila?"

"Writin' a private letter," said Sheila Pat.

"Take it up into your room! You have no business in here at all."

"Has," said Sheila Pat, in very judicial tones, "has Herr Schmidt ever told you that you're like a little sunbeam in his room, and just as welcome?"

Miss Kezia seemed a little disconcerted.

"N-no," she said.

"Then you'd better go," the Atom observed. "He's said that to me."

She bent over her writing.

Miss Kezia came closer.

"Please," said Sheila Pat, "don't read what I'm writin'. It's very private."

"May I ask," said Miss Kezia, "if Herr Schmidt has also given you permission to use his writing materials and paper?"

"He hasn't given me _permission_," said Sheila Pat; "he asked me to do him the _honour_ of placin' them at my disposal."

It sounded very grand. Miss Kezia left the room.

She went upstairs to the Stronghold to speak to Nell. Nell was seated at the table, writing. She started up guiltily as Miss Kezia entered the room.

"You all appear to be very busy writing this morning," Miss Kezia said crossly.

For some reason or other this seemed to amuse Nell considerably. She began to laugh.

"Oh, are they writing, too? I wonder--" She broke off, and went on laughing.

"Eileen, I am constantly obliged to chide you for your frivolity. You laugh at nothing; or, at least, I can see no cause for laughter?"

There was a pronounced query at the end of her sentence. Nell strove to answer it.

"Well, you see--you see--we're writing--private letters--at least, I am, and now you say--so I suppose they are, too--you see--oh, I c-c-can't help it, it's s-so f-f-funny!"

Miss Kezia gave the message she had come to deliver; she gave it in an austere voice, and with a face of disgust. The she went.

"Oh, I'm a w-worm!" Nell chuckled, crawling beneath the sofa to speak to James. "But, oh, Jimmy, I feel all mad these days! If--if it comes to nothing--but it won't! it won't! Oh, Jimmy!"

The next morning was bright and sunny, with a gladness in the air, a song of spring. It was the first of April, and even in London it was a glorious day.

"I won't even _think_ the thought, 'What it would be like at Kilbrannan,'" Nell declared to Denis, when she met him on her way down to breakfast, "because--shan't we soon be there?" She broke out singing:--

"'There blooms a bonny flower,
Up the heather glen;
Tho' bright in sun, in shower
'Tis just as bright again.
I never can pass by it,
I never dar' go nigh it,
My heart it won't be quiet,
Up the heather glen.
Sing O, the blooming heather!
O, the heather glen!
Where fairest fairies gather
To lure in mortal men--'"

She broke off; she turned to him on the last stair, hung on to his arm.

"Denis, if only, _only_ we might tell them! My hair fairly rises with the weight of the secret! I know Sheila Pat is wondering what has come to us!"

"Eileen, come in to breakfast!"

They went in. On the table there lay a great pile of letters. Molly and the Atom came hurrying in; Denis tossed letters to them all, and kept a few himself.

"I cannot understand why there are so many letters this morning," Miss Kezia observed. She looked round the table, surprised.

"Why do you not open them?" she asked.

"Anticipation is the soul of wit!" observed Denis, absurdly.

They fingered their letters, laughing, glancing at each other.

"Have you all gone mad?" Miss Kezia demanded.

"That's a good suggestion," Denis opined thoughtfully. "They do look somewhat abbreviated in the top story. As for me, I will open my letters at one minute past twelve, noon."

He airily tucked them away in an inner pocket.

"I request an explanation of these horribly addressed letters!" Miss Kezia cried.

The laughter broke out hilariously. Denis stretched out, picked up one of Sheila Pat's letters, and eyed it with pride.

"I thought that rather good," he observed. "Look at the curly little heads, and those tricky Greek _e_'s!"

"Molly!" Miss Kezia turned to her with an air of finality, "Molly, will _you_ vouchsafe me an explanation?"

Molly, at once proud and horrified, plunged forthwith:--

"Oh, yes, Aunt Kezia, you see, it's April the first, and you're a fool if you don't know it--"

She made an unfortunate pause, flustered by a burst of laughter.

Miss Kezia's cheek reddened a little.

"Molly, your language--"

"Oh, no! Oh, I didn't mean that! I mean that if you don't know it, you get caught, and if you do, you don't, and--and--you see--we wrote letters to each other--we didn't know the others were remembering the date, too, and of course if it had been our own handwriting we'd have known, you see. So we disguised them, and we can't open them before twelve or we'll be fools." She stopped, out of breath.

Miss Kezia said slowly:--

"Do you mean that you have wasted all those stamps, that paper, those envelopes, on a ridiculous childish game? That you have thrown away honest pennies on such tom-foolery?"

She proceeded to deliver a lecture on thrift which lasted throughout breakfast. Just before Denis started for the bank, a telegram came for Nell. Sarah brought it up to the Stronghold. She looked at Nell with scared pity in her face.

"It's for you, miss!"

Nell seized it, tore it open, burst out laughing.

"I'm caught! It's from Moira McCarthy! Oh, I _wish_ I could catch her!"

She crumpled it up and threw it at Denis.

Sheila Pat picked it up and studied it.

"April 1," she read thoughtfully. She smoothed the paper out with a tender little hand, then folded it carefully, carried it to her room, and locked it in the box where she kept such treasures as she had brought to London with her. They were in the hall a little later, Denis had just gone, when there was another loud double knock at the door. Sarah came running, but Nell was before her. She opened the door; a telegraph boy stood on the step. She took the telegram from him. "For you this time, Sheila Pat!"

Sheila Pat took it. She looked at it.

"And 'er so little!" Sarah murmured from the background.

"Molly," said the Atom, "wouldn't you like to open it?"

"No, thank you!"

"I know it's from that Ted!" opined Nell. "Open it, Atom. The boy's waiting to know if there's an answer!"

From the dining room issued Miss Kezia.

"A telegram? And for you, Sheila? Why do you not open it?"

Sheila Pat hesitated. Longing to see if it were by any chance another telegram from Ireland, and determination not to let Ted Lancaster catch her, fought within her small bosom.

"Are you afraid?" Miss Kezia said, coming forward. "I will open it for you."

Now at the opening words of her sentence Sheila Pat's head had been uplifted with a disgusted jerk, but as Miss Kezia finished speaking, a sudden impish glow shone in her face, and gravely she held out the orange envelope. Miss Kezia took it. They watched breathlessly. She tore open the envelope, she read what was written on the form inside. A great and triumphant satisfaction illumined the Atom's small features as she watched the expression that overspread her aunt's countenance.

"It is, I suppose, intended to be witty," Miss Kezia observed at last. "I consider it a vulgar and sinfully wasteful joke. Sheila, did you know what the telegram contained?"

"I thought it was somethin' like that," the Atom said. "Please give it to me." She turned to Nell. "There can't be two April Fools over _one_ thing, can there?"

The telegram was long; it was addressed in full to Miss Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien, and it said: "Shure and isn't it afther being the 1st of April then, och begorra, and isn't it meself will be having the laugh of ye entoirely at all at all, for when ye rade this, won't ye be afther being taken in ochone acushla!"

"That telegram," said Miss Kezia, in awful tones, "cost four shillings and eightpence to send."

Nell eyed her admiringly.

"How quickly you can add up!" she said.

A little later Molly stole guiltily away up to her room. She locked the door, and sitting down on her bed began to tear open envelopes. Presently to her through the keyhole came a whisper:--

"Molly O'Brien, I hear the rending of note-paper!"

Molly jumped; her face grew scarlet.

"Oh, Nell! I!--I--"

Through the keyhole there was a ripple of triumphant laughter. Molly stood, red, and stammering futile excuses, and heard the laughter die away down the passage.

*CHAPTER XXXV*

"Denis," said Nell, "let's!"

She turned to him; her cheeks were flushed pink, her breath came in quick little pants between her lips.

"Right you are!"

She ran towards the door, but Ted barred her way.

"I'm a mere cautious Englishman," he said, with an uncomfortable little laugh. "I want to remind you--"

She danced before him, her hands over her ears.

"I know it all by heart, Teddie. 'Tis mere waste of breath to tell it me all over again. And if you died for want of breath through telling me, I shouldn't understand any more than I do now, not if you went on and on for ever! 'The shares,'" her laughing voice sobered, echoed his ponderously, "'have only gone up a little. It is true that they continue to go up, but they may never pay a high enough dividend to enable you to return to Kilbrannan.' There, don't I know it all?"

Suddenly she dropped her hands, her lips quivered.

"I must tell them, oh, I must! Even if--if--it comes to nothing,--oh, we must risk it, mustn't we, Denis? Sheila Pat--"

She turned and went over to the window.

Ted looked as if all the cares of the state sat upon his shoulders.

Denis said:--

"We've kept it from them till it's pretty well certain--"

"You can't tell," put in Ted, moodily.

"Well, they'll face it somehow, whatever happens. And meanwhile--why, man, think what it'll mean to them! Come along, Nell!"

Molly and Sheila Pat were downstairs trying to play a duet on the piano.

When Nell and Denis went in, Sheila Pat glanced round; her eyes widened suddenly, her hand fell with a little crash of notes on the keyboard. She sat staring at Nell; a little quiver went through her.

"Yes--yes--oh, Atom!" Nell cried out.

She left Molly to Denis. She went closer to Sheila Pat, and told her--told her breathlessly, almost incoherently, her words hurrying one over the other.

Sheila Pat sat awhile, rigid on the stool, then suddenly she slipped to the floor, she ran at Nell, her arms held out: "Nell--oh, Nell!"

Nell held her close, whispering to her, and Sheila Pat cried, with never a thought of the hurt to her dignity.

That night when ready for bed she turned to Nell.

"Nell," she said in very dignified tones, "please don't wait."

She stood, a small figure in her white nightgown, her face very tired, her eyes very bright. Nell, looking at her, thought suddenly of the time she had been so ill. A little shiver went through her.

"Why not, sweet?" she said.

"I shall be a long while over my prayers, you see. It worries me to have you waitin'; I've got a good deal to say to God to-night."

As Nell left the room, the Atom's voice pursued her:--

"Nell, I do want to be very perlite to-night. Don't you think I'd better call him _Mister_ God?"

*CHAPTER XXXVI*

It was on the 9th of May that the letters came. They came in the middle of the morning, when Nell and Molly and Sheila Pat were wrestling with their studies. It was a real wrestle to fix their minds on their work, for they knew it was mail day, and they knew that they might get an answer to their cablegram that week. The Reve d'or shares had gone up and up. That alone was sufficient to make any study a weariness of the flesh. The wild hilarity in the atmosphere lately had been borne with a considerable amount of fortitude by Miss Kezia. There had been storms; there had been lectures; but Miss Kezia found herself making excuses for her Irish relatives. She was not given to making excuses for people, any more than she would have made them for herself; but she certainly took to reminding herself during these hilarious days of such facts connected with the O'Briens, as their youth, the peculiar circumstances attending the Reve d'or shares, and largest excuse of all, their nationality. Had she possessed nerves, they would have suffered acutely. She wished sincerely that her relatives would not make such undesirable acquaintances. She came upon Nell in the hall one day holding a diminutive baby. It was enveloped entirely in an old shawl, and Nell told her it was Irish! Miss Kezia had no fondness for babies, but being in an amiable mood, she came forward to examine this one. But Nell drew back with all the appearance of anxious alarm.

"Do you think you'd better come near, Aunt Kezia? He's fretful--perhaps he has the measles or scarlet fever."

Miss Kezia had been very angry, and considerably alarmed. She had ordered his instant return to his parents.

"Who is he? Where does he come from? Where are his people?"

Nell had told her that the baby's name was James O'Driscoll, that she did not know where his people were, but would take him to some friends of his.

Miss Kezia had been a good deal worried. For several days she scrutinised her relatives' countenances, dreading to find them flushed or spotted. But the weeks slipped by and not a spot appeared; not one face was unduly flushed. Then the 9th of May dawned. It was a beautiful 9th of May; the hilarity of these spring days was mixed with a great restlessness; no one could settle down to anything. The letters--there were four of them--came in the middle of the morning.

The first Miss Kezia knew of their arrival, was when she was swept aside in the hall by an advancing trio, making for the door. She asked questions. She received answers, breathless, wild, glad answers that left her with a dazed understanding that something very wonderful had happened, that they had received letters of marvellous import. Then they swept out of the door. They left Miss Kezia calling out that Molly's gloves were odd; that Sheila Pat's hat was on back to front; that Nell had left her painting pinafore on, and it showed beneath her coat. They laughed and waved back to her airily; they started, to her consternation, running. She would have been more concerned had she known where they were going. They made straight for the bank where Denis worked. They ran all the way; they pushed open the swing doors, they hurried in waving their letters above their heads.

Mr. Tellbridge was there, giving instructions to a clerk. Both he and the clerk looked startled. Mr. Tellbridge also looked disapproving.

"Good morning!" Nell cried out breathlessly. "Oh, where is Denis? Where is he, Mr. Tellbridge?"

"Here I am! What's up?"

From round the partition he came.

"Letters, Denis! They're coming home! In about two weeks! They got the cablegram! He was just going to sell out! P.&O. boat! In a fortnight they'll be here!"

Mr. Tellbridge pushed his spectacles up on his brow, and eyed them with a mild surprise. He seemed to find the study of them and their joy bewildering. In the babel his somewhat pompous, but not unkindly, "Dear me, I cannot allow this!" passed unheard.

At last Nell turned to him:--

"Denis may come with us now, mayn't he, Mr. Tellbridge? You see, he couldn't do any work now, possibly."

"Pennington will do my share, when he comes in," observed Denis, easily.

Nell looked at the bank manager, gave a little laugh.

"We're being awfully rude," she said. "I will try to explain."

She did try. She tried to speak soberly, plainly, but her words sang, jostled each other, grew picturesquely extravagant.

Mr. Tellbridge's mild disapproval was not proof against her eloquence. He professed himself delighted at the good news. He gave Denis a half-holiday, his benignity tempered by a drily expressed suggestion that the work would not suffer much from his absence.

They went straight to Gowan Square, found Ted in, and dragged him off to lunch.

At No. 35 Henley Road, boiled mutton and a bread-and-butter pudding awaited them in vain. At the Express Dairy in Oxford Street four perfectly happy people lunched that day. Ted was quieter. He seemed to derive a certain amount of satisfaction from watching and teasing Sheila Pat. Sheila Pat was very Irish, her sharp little tongue very quick, and very broadly accented. She was never at a loss for a repartee. Her great eyes fairly glittered with excitement; a faint pink flush glowed on either cheek; her pig-tail, owing to constant rude tweaks, stuck out at an aggressive angle. Halfway through lunch, Ted said:--

"And now, suppose some one explains what it's all about."

"Explain!"

"One at a time, please. Oh, not just yet, perhaps. I thought I'd given you time for the effervescence to have subsided a little--"

"Time? An hour or so?" laughed Nell. "Why, we shall go on effervescing like ginger beer for the whole of the next fortnight!"

He sighed.

"I wonder if Miss Kezia's effervescing, too! Why do you laugh? I'm thinking of applying to her for an explanation of your state."

Nell bent toward him.

"Ask," she said softly; "after all, it's you--you--you--who did it all! Oh, Ted, dad says he had had an offer for the shares, and had just decided to sell out when he received the cablegram!"

"How'll they be home in a fortnight?" he put in quickly, warding off her gratitude. "Question No. 1."

"Why, mother's quite strong and well now, so she doesn't need the long sea voyage, by sailing vessel now, you see!"

"But I thought the passage was booked--"

"Dad managed to exchange on to a P.&O. boat."

"Ah, now I begin to understand."

"Time you did," Denis remarked. "Your skull must be a foot thick."

It was later, up in the Stronghold, that Nell drew near to Ted.

"Mother and dad are so surprised and inquisitive," she began. "They can't think _how_ we knew about those shares, you see." She paused. "If it hadn't been for you, dad would have sold out--I don't understand a bit--but he says it would have been for quite a little, we--we couldn't have gone back to Kilbrannan."

There was a little pause.

Denis strolled up to them.

"Ted," Nell said, "you will spend all your vacations with us, won't you? Except just a week here and there for other people--won't you?"

He laughed uncomfortably.

"I know I've been pretty good at poking myself in here--" he began.

"_Teddie_!" Nell ejaculated.

"Don't be such a fool!" Denis exclaimed angrily.

"Well, anyhow, your people--"

"Will be delighted if you'll make Kilbrannan another home," finished Denis, proudly.

Nell held her letter out to him.

"It's true, Teddie. Read what mother says about you. She knows all about you. There--at the top of the page."

He took the letter and read:--

"I know you would not have cabled to us as you did unless you had very strong reasons for your opinion that the shares were going up; that, and the fact that your father had an offer for them--oh, Nell, he is telling Denis about that! He very nearly accepted it!--well, this makes me hope that we shall be able to return to our home. Won't we all be willing to economise? Bread and potatoes and Kilbrannan are not to be despised, are they, asthore? You and Denis must make your friend, Ted Lancaster, promise that, if we only can go back, he will look upon it as a second home. Tell him we shall want as much of his time as he can spare to be spent at Kilbrannan, and we'll manage to add a trout or two, perhaps even a salmon, to the bread and potatoes when he is with us. With these extras, and the hearty welcome he will receive from us all, I hope he'll find Kilbrannan so bearable that all his vacations will be given to us!"

Ted grew very red as he perused the letter. He handed it back in silence.

"Well?" Nell laughed.

"I say--er--why, it's no end kind--"

"That'll do. You needn't say anything, except--you will, Teddie, won't you?"

"By Jove, yes!" he said.

He stood looking out of the window. He felt then the first liking for Mrs. O'Brien that afterwards developed into such devotion that she always declared she had two sons.

Once he approached Nell.

"I say," he said, "you know--I--I mean a lot!"

She gave a little laugh.

"So do I," she said. "Oh, Ted--"

"But you say it!" he remonstrated, and strode across to Sheila Pat, whose pig-tail he proceeded to pull. But Sheila Pat was very dignified.

"Please don't intrude. I'm thinkin'."

Presently she came to Nell.

"Nell," she whispered, "Kilbrannan's very healthy, isn't it?"

"Why, yes, sweet!"

"I'm thinkin' maybe it'll make Tommy's left leg grow as long as the other one!"

"I'm afraid it won't do that, asthore."

Her face fell.

"I'm glad I didn't mention it to him," she said earnestly. "I didn't on purpose, because I wasn't wantin' to give false hopes to him, you see."

Nell bent and kissed her.

"It will make him strong and well, anyway."

Sheila Pat nodded. She went across to James O'Driscoll.

"In a fortnight and two days we'll introduce you to your cousin!" she said.

That evening Nell went into her bedroom. She came upon an absorbed Atom, kneeling before her treasure box.

"What are you doing, Sheila Pat?"

Sheila Pat lifted her head; her small face was full of a restless joy. She said staidly:--

"Sure, Nell O'Brien, and what would I be doin' then? _I'm packin'_!"