THE YOUNG O'BRIENS

THE YOUNG O'BRIENS

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR SOJOURN IN LONDON

By the author of "ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN"

[Transcriber's note: Margaret Westrup]

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MDCCCCVI

Copyright, 1906 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

By the same Author

ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN Fifth Edition

HELEN ALLISTON

THE YOUNG O'BRIENS

CHAPTER I

Inside the hired omnibus there was a dead silence. Outside the rain lashed drearily against the window panes. From the corner where Molly sat there came a dismal, despairing sniffle, drowned, before its finish, by Denis's superlatively cheerful voice.

"Sure, 'tis a rough night entirely!" he observed airily.

Nell gave a sudden quick little laugh with a queer end to it.

"So it is!" she said, and her effort after cheerfulness gave the remark a surprised tone, as if she had not noticed before that the night was rough.

Sheila Pat sat silent in her corner, her slim little body stiff and erect, a bag and a box clutched tight in her small arms. Afterwards, later that night, she found that her arms ached. There was desperation in that tight clutch of the bag and the box.

Suddenly Mr. O'Brien spoke; he recognised the futility of ignoring what was in everyone's mind.

"Well," he said, "a year soon passes, after all, and I hope we shall be back in about ten or eleven months."

"But—but not—" came a watery stammer from Molly's corner, but Nell broke in hurriedly.

"I—I wonder will you look different, dad?"

"Oh, yes," her mother laughed the pretty laugh that was just like Nell's, "I shall be a horrid, stout old woman! Even Sheila Pat won't acknowledge me then!"

Sheila Pat said nothing.

Mrs. O'Brien squeezed Nell's fingers tightly. There was another silence. There was nothing to say. Everything had been said over and over again. The wind sent the rain beating angrily against the closed windows. The omnibus jolted and jarred over the road.

A hoarse shout smote on their ears, and the driver's whip flicked one of the panes.

Denis jumped up and let down the small window in front. Then shouting began; the wind howled derisively, drowning their voices. The driver's hoarse yells, and Denis's impatient shouts, asked and answered questions over and over again. At last Denis drew in his head:

"If that's a specimen of the London driver, I don't think much of 'em! The wind didn't get at you, did it, mother?"

"No, dear, your broad shoulders kept it off."

"Does he seem to understand the way now?" Mr. O'Brien queried.

"I wouldn't like to answer for him. I've explained till I'm hoarse, but the damp seems to have got to his brain—it won't work—rusty, you know."

"Isn't his voice funny?" observed Nell, doing her duty manfully.

"Drivers often have those hoarse voices," responded her father, and for just as long as they could make it last, they used that driver as a topic of conversation. Certainly he did not seem of much use for any other purpose.

It was not long before there came another flick against the window, and on Denis putting forth his head, there ensued more shouts and yells. In a lull of the wind the driver waxed sentimentally despairing. "Never been to these 'ere East Lunnon docks afore—eh, sir? Wot? Which turning? Can't see no turning. It ain't a night as I'd turn a pore blessed cat out—much less a respectable fambly man with little children dependant on 'im! Eh, sir? Can't 'ear, sir! Wot? Poplar? Ain't nowhere's near Poplar!"

Denis drew in his head.

"Of all the old fools! I'd better go up on to the box and direct him. I know my way better than he does, anyway, though I've only been to the docks once."

"It's raining so, Denis," his mother put in.

"But we don't want the death from exposure of the respectable fambly man on our consciences, do we, mother? Not to mention the touching little children—"

It ended in his exit to the box. Nell watched him go with wide, strained eyes; she crushed down a strong impulse to clutch at his coat. Without her twin she felt feeble and deserted.

When the omnibus stopped at last outside the dock gates, no one made a movement towards getting out. Long and dreary as that drive had been, each one, looking out at those gates looming so big and grim in the dim light cast by a solitary lamp, wished it could begin all over again. The parting grew, at that jolting stop, suddenly, acutely nearer. In spite of the dread of it, perhaps no one had quite realised it. To get out of the omnibus was to give it a hideous reality. A cautious voice demanded their business. Denis appeared at the door. One by one they left the omnibus. The policeman, to whom the cautious voice belonged, let them through a wicket; then began a dreary march in the dark; the wind sent the rain beating against them in angry little gusts. Laden with bundles and packages, they stumbled along in the dense darkness, treading into puddles, splashing, slipping. There were no friendly lamps to cast a warning glimmer on the deep puddles left by the rain in the holes of the uneven ground. They could barely distinguish the form of the diminutive guide with whom the policeman had provided them. But they could hear him. He was a small, sharp-looking boy, who heeded neither rain nor wind nor dark, but trudged along, in and out the puddles, up and down the hillocks, emitting a kind of dismal whistling below his breath.

Nell laughed suddenly with an overdone hilarity.

"The water's trickling down my neck!"

Denis seconded her with, "It's running a regular cascade off my hat rim!"

Then the Atom spoke; it was the first remark she had made since they had started from Miss Kezia's house in Henley Road.

"Isn't is London?" she said.

Her father was amused.

"You know, we do see rain occasionally at home," he observed.

"There's rain and rain!" the Atom declared sapiently, and relapsed again into her dour silence.

Molly, with a sudden sob, put the fear that was in everyone's mind into words.

"It's—awfully bad—for mother!"

"Oh, I shall be all right, dear," Mrs. O'Brien insisted with tired cheerfulness.

"I've a good mind to drop my bag and carry you!" her husband declared.

"Oh, Owen, what a first appearance for the wife of the ship's surgeon! Let me at least be dignified."

Beyond the small figure of their guide the Albany loomed, slowly taking shape in the dark, big, very mysterious.

"I bet we came to the wrong entrance," Denis observed.

Mr. O'Brien handed the guide a tip. "I'm afraid we did," he said.

The guide disappeared with a "thankysir"; a steward's head bobbed up from the hatchway and shouted out directions. Mr. O'Brien and Denis helped the others along a wet, slippery board, and over the ship's side.

The saloon looked more cheerful; deserted as it was, it wore quite a festive air after the wet and darkness outside.

In the cabin they hung up a few things, to give it a more homelike air, and because it was easier to do something than not. They procured coffee from the steward, but no one wanted it. Everyone pretended they did, except Sheila Pat, who never pretended. Mrs. O'Brien made her drink it.

"You are cold and wet, dear; it—I—will—"

She stopped abruptly. Nell saw and understood. She went close.

"I—I will take care of her—" she whispered.

She had promised it so often, but Mrs. O'Brien turned to her gratefully.

"Yes, dear," she said; her eyes went from Nell back again hungrily to the bit of brow and head that Sheila Pat's big coffee cup left exposed.

"I know you will, Nell," she said gently, and kissed her.

Several other passengers had arrived and sat or stood about the saloon and cabins with an air of unsettledness, of uncertainty. The last minute came suddenly at the end. There was a sort of breathless rush; injunctions, good-byes, forcedly hopeful prognostications.

"A year soon passes!" Mr. O'Brien said again.

A little later they were in the omnibus once more. There were gaps now; there was so much room to move about. Those gaps gave a poignant reality to the loneliness.

In Nell's mind there grew up a dull wonder whether anyone could conceivably think that a year soon passes. To her the coming year stretched long and interminable; at the moment she was incapable of looking beyond it. Father and mother were gone, and home was gone too. The wonder passed, and with aching iteration there dinned in her ears—"So long as the shamrock's growing in Ireland, will there be O'Briens in Kilbrannan." It was a prediction of an old gipsy's. She had given it when telling Denis his fortune. That was last year, barely a year ago, and now—Nell's lips curled with a sudden bitterness that made her young, soft face look, for the moment, older—now there were strangers in their home, and no O'Briens in Kilbrannan. She wondered tragically how it was possible to live through months such as they had lived through. Looking back, the failure of the bank in which most of her father's money had been placed, and which had been the first misfortune to fall upon them, seemed a small calamity. She remembered the shock of it, the sorrow, with surprise now. What though they had been obliged to retrench, to pinch and try to learn the lesson of economy, they had still their home and were not separated. The grief of parting with old servants, with some of the horses, had been sharp. But they had still dear old Patsy; they had O'Leary and Gretta; and they had—Nell's breath caught suddenly—they had Acushla, the Colleen Bawn. Her thoughts chased each other over those unhappy months. The day when her mother had so suddenly been taken ill stood out, sharp and grim. She remembered the anxious worry she had experienced when she saw that in spite of the doctor's hopeful words, in spite of the daily improvement in the invalid, her father's face refused to lighten. She remembered the slow growth of suspicion in her mind, so that when at last he asked her and Denis to come into the study one day, she knew they were to hear some bad news. Denis knew it too, but in their worst prognostications they had never given one thought to the possibility of having to give up their home for awhile. Even when their father had told them, they could not comprehend quite. Nell remembered how she had stood staring stupidly at the binding of one of Ruskin's works in the book-case, where a ray of sunlight shone on it. She had found herself saying, "Sesame and Lilies." Then her eyes had followed the ray of sunshine to the windows—beyond the windows. She gave a little shudder at the memory of that moment of sudden, sharp realisation. The study faced east; its windows looked out on to great boulders of grey rock that led in a long uneven slope to the seaweed-covered rocks and the sea. The heather had been out then; the boulders were covered with it; there was a little mist in the air, so that the grey and purple mingled in a lovely haze of colour. The sea-gulls and the gannets were quarrelling over something; their voices came in at the open windows. The scent of the seaweed had come to her, too; and quite suddenly she had understood that they were to leave it all. Her father had gone on speaking; she had felt vaguely sorry for him, as she listened to his halting speech and saw the strained look on his face. But in those first minutes nothing was of moment, nothing was real, save the crushing blow that they were to leave their home; that they were to go away; that strangers were to live in it. But presently she realised that he was trying to prepare them for some further bad news. She had smiled at his thinking it necessary to prepare them; nothing mattered now. Denis had had the same feeling. He had broken into his father's speech abruptly, roughly:—

"Tell us what it is. What does it matter, anyway?"

But Mr. O'Brien had gone on skirting the subject, preparing them.

"I have been anxious for months about those mine shares. They have gone down and down, and now they have ceased to pay any dividends at all."

He had said it before, had explained that it was because of these shares that they must let their home.

Denis said, surprised, "The Rêve d'or shares?"

"Why, yes! Oh, you mean I've told you that already? But I thought they were such a good investment—" he broke off, and walked quickly to the window.

"Your mother isn't getting her strength back," he said suddenly.

They realised at once that there were still things that mattered. He went on quickly: "You needn't be anxious. Oh, no! But Dr. O'Donovan—" he broke off, and started afresh. "You know that, as a young man, I didn't expect to come into this—" he waved his hand impatiently around. There was an air about him now of wanting to get it over as quickly as possible; an irritated impatience made his words hurried.

"Well, you know, I studied medicine. I was a qualified doctor. It's all settled. I've got the post. There's no other way. Dr. O'Donovan says your mother must have a sea voyage. We can't afford it. I've got the post of surgeon on the Albany—starts at end of October for Australia—sailing ship."

They knew it all at last. Thinking it over now, Nell was struck with the difference there had been from his usual manner of speaking. She knew now what it had cost him to tell them. Then she had been too absorbed in her horror to think much of anything beyond the news he had told them.

After that, in the weeks that followed, there had been the cruel carrying into effect of the news. There had been much wearisome talk. Amongst it Nell remembered one thing that had been clear and definite at once. That was Denis's determination to do some sort of work. Mr. O'Brien wished him to study shorthand and type-writing, with a literary future in view. But Denis refused, beyond agreeing to study them in his spare time. For the rest he intended to do work that would have remuneration attached to it. Already he was fired with hope and ambition to turn the strangers from their home. Mr. O'Brien secured him a position as a clerk in a London bank, the manager of which had been a schoolfellow of his. Nell cried miserably because she wasn't a boy. Denis shook her, and painted, in glowing colours, the great academy picture that in a few years' time was to win her fame and fortune. But two or three years seemed such an interminable time that, mostly, her mind refused to grasp the thought.

There had been much discussion as to where they should stay while their parents were away. They were singularly destitute of relations. They had some cousins in America, and an aunt by marriage in London. They had never seen the aunt; but she happened to live near the bank where Denis had found employment. She had lately lost her mother, and with her the annuity that had helped to pay the rent of the house. She wrote suggesting that they should come to her. After much worried discussion it was settled that they should live with her for the time. Mr. O'Brien paid a small sum for their maintenance in advance, and they faced the thought of a house in a street in London.

Sheila Pat, before she left Kilbrannan, laid out a burying-ground. She dug with a dogged face, and a mind black with pictures of a London where it was always foggy—where there were nothing but muddy pavements; roads crowded with poor tired horses carrying loads too heavy for them; and tall houses packed so close together that you were stifled. She refused to lighten the picture by the admittance into it of so much as one blade of grass. She chose a spot for her burying-ground close by the little stream that gurgled so softly sometimes and roared and rushed at others. The smooth piece of grass, just by the boulders that turned the stream into a little cascade, was sheltered on the other side by a hill that rose up—grey rock, purple heather, bracken, and grass—till it seemed to meet the sky. There Sheila Pat buried her treasures. She had always scorned dolls; only once had she been presented with a doll, and within the day it had been mercilessly drowned. But she had many treasures, and she buried them, in an agony of renunciation. "Here you will have the heather and the stream, and when the wind blows from the west you'll get the scent of the turf smoke from Biddy's cottage." She laid a large and grinning monkey tenderly down beside a one-legged driver. "Oh, my dears, and when the wind's in the east, you'll get the sea,"—she hid her face in a passion of woe—"and you'll be hearing the trees whisp'rin' and singin' and your Sheila Pat far away in a great, dirty London, dead with stiflin', and only streets to walk in!"

She hugged up to her bosom a jaunty jockey, who had lost an eye and a nose.

"I'll put you on Mavourneen—your own Mavourneen—who won the Dalgerry race for you." She seized up Mavourneen and hugged her too. "You won't mind waitin' for me, under the earth; for isn't it Irish earth, Mavourneen? And weren't you born and bred on it? But I was, too! Oh, I was, too!"

The old grey rock and the heather looked down upon a prone Atom—prone and shaking in a storm of bitter weeping—midst dogs and horses, jockeys, monkeys, and jaunting-car drivers.

No one intruded on her there. Sheila Pat had not been known to cry since her babyhood. She scorned tears; no physical hurt could break down her sturdy self-control. In those last days she was often a ludicrous Atom. Grave, self-contained, her pig-tail immaculate, she would emerge from the burying-ground, facing the world with a brave little countenance and all unaware that it was adorned with patches and streaks of dirt.

The pig-tail was generally crooked, but that was merely because Sheila Pat invariably plaited it herself. No one would do it for her; they did not approve of her mode of dressing her hair, but the Atom clung obstinately to her pig-tail, and serenely wore it over her left shoulder.

Nell, in the omnibus, glanced across at the small, still figure opposite her; a great ache seized her throat.

Suddenly Denis made a valiant effort. He broke the silence with a jocose—

"This rivals Dinny O'Sullivan's donkey barrow! My teeth are fairly rattling in my boots!"

Nell said "yes" with weary dutifulness.

The silence fell again. He rubbed his brow, and recognised the uselessness of worrying them with such palpably unreal cheerfulness. All his castles in Spain were, for the time being, razed to the ground. With the O'Briens there was no possibility of a story or two tumbling; the whole edifice had to tower to the skies or fall flat to the ground. The omnibus drew up outside No. 35, Henley Road. They got out, and stood a moment—a forlorn little group—looking at the tall, narrow house, with, to their eyes, such an unhappy air of being wedged in too tightly between the two neighbouring houses.

"Run in and knock, while I pay up," Denis admonished them.

They trailed slowly up the flight of steps. Nell knocked. There was a pause; then they heard a step approaching the door. With a sudden spasmodic burst of awakened conscience and courage Nell drew herself erect and tried to achieve a smile.

The rattle of bars and chains that heralded the opening of the door was hideous to their unaccustomed ears; it shocked them with its clang of inhospitality—its suggestion of suspicion.

Miss Kezia opened the door a cautious inch or two and peered out. Her face appeared to them, against the light, very long and very black.

"It's you," she said; "come in."

Nell faltered, calling together all her stock of politeness, "I'm sorry that you had to sit up for us."

Miss Kezia waved it aside with a curt response that a little loss of sleep would not hurt her.

There was porridge waiting for them in the dining room. Too wretched, too apathetic to make the necessary stand against it, they sat down to the table and tried to eat.

The dining room was furnished strictly for use and not for ornament. Heavy chairs and a heavier sideboard constituted all the furniture, save the table. The floor was covered with a cold linoleum. There was no flower in the room. Only one gas-burner was alight, and it left gloomy corners. There was a stiff look about it all, a poverty and bareness that was bewilderingly new to them. A beautiful little cocker spaniel, who pressed close to them with plaintive whimpers when they entered the room, looked quite out of place there. Miss Kezia eyed her with disfavour. She demanded, "Where will that dog sleep?"

The want of due respect in the designation roused Sheila Pat.

She said coldly, "Her name is Kate Kearney."

"What a ridiculous name!" Miss Kezia ejaculated.

The Atom was indignant.

"Is it rickelous? And how about Kezia, then?"

There was a pause.

Denis interposed amusedly: "Perhaps you don't know the song, Aunt Kezia? It's like this—" Gaily his voice sang out:—

"'Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?

She lives on the banks of Killarney—'

"Eh? Noise? Noise?" he murmured surprisedly. "Allow me just to whisper the lines that fit K.K. so beautifully:—

"'For that eye is so modestly beaming

You ne'er think of mischief she's dreaming—'"

Grim and portentous came an interruption.

"Is it mischievous?"

"Er—" said Denis, and his eye twinkled, "she was when she was a puppy, you see."

"Um," observed Miss Kezia. "If it works any mischief here, it will have to be chained up in the garden."

"Sure, then," burst wildly from the Atom, "'tis myself'll be chained beside her!"

"Sheila, do not be absurd!"

"And she isn't 'it'! If you call her 'it' again, I'll be callin' you a Scotch bannock!"

Nell roused to a perfunctory—

"Oh, Sheila Pat!"

Miss Kezia said coldly, "You are a very rude little girl." She turned to Denis. "Will you tell me where that dog is to sleep?"

"On the mat outside Nell's door."

"I will not have a dog rampaging over my house to work what mischief it likes while we sleep."

"She shall sleep on my bed," put in a very disdainful Atom.

"Certainly she shall not! Disgusting! Unhealthy! Spoiling my counterpanes!"

Nell looked at Miss Kezia, a weary wonder in her face. "She can sleep on the floor beside my bed," she said.

Miss Kezia hesitated; her eyes met those of the Atom—wide, defiant, indomitable in her small, obstinate face. In her ears echoed some words of Mrs. O'Brien's that Miss Kezia had privately labelled foolish. "Sheila Pat is delicate. Perhaps we have spoilt her a little. She is very strong-willed. She cannot be driven, but she can be led. Her feelings use her up—exhaust her." There had been a little sudden hopeless pause there; then—"I hope you will understand her."

Miss Kezia had not noticed the pause or the pleading note—a note vibrating with the struggle against the speaker's own conviction. She would not have understood, had she noticed, any more than she would ever understand the Atom of humanity who was defying her now.

"Very well," she said, with a glance of dislike at poor K.K.

Denis broke in with a solicitous air, and a tone reminiscent of the Blarney Stone:—

"I do wish you would go to bed, Aunt Kezia! You do look so tired."

Nell smiled suddenly.

"Yes, do, Aunt Kezia," she urged demurely.

Miss Kezia, after somewhat lengthy directions as to turning off the gas, shutting, locking, and hanging a huge burglar bell on the dining-room door, turned to leave the room.

Sheila Pat, stiff, erect, followed her with warlike gaze.

Miss Kezia paused and said:—

"See that that baby goes to bed the minute she has finished her porridge. She ought not to have gone to the docks at all—"

Nell flashed out a shaky interruption—

"Others—thought she ought!"

The Atom observed calmly:—

"I am not a baby. At home, gerrels of six will not be babies. I'm not wantin' the stirabout at all, thank you."

"Sheila, you are speaking with an atrocious accent!"

For the first time that night the Atom's sombre eyes lit with a gleam of satisfaction.

"Accent, is it? Sure and 'tisn't me own native accent I'd be ashamed of then!" she retorted.

"It isn't the accent of ladies and gentlemen, Sheila! You are a rude and foolish little girl!"

Calm and unabashed, the Atom responded with fervour.

"'Tis the way many of my best friends spake at home—always—wakin' and sleepin' they spake like that, and I'll be spakin' like it, too."

With her black little head well up, and her absurd pig-tail at an acute angle, she waited for Miss Kezia's response.

But Denis interposed from the doorway with a judicious appeal to her sense of economy.

"I say, Aunt Kezia, I've lit your candle, and it's spluttering like a dumb man asking for a tip!"

Miss Kezia turned and hurriedly left the room.

Molly suddenly pushed her bowl away with an angry clatter. She flung her arms out over the table and hid her face in them.

"Oh, I can't—help it!" she cried out wildly. "Everything's so—awful!" and she burst into tears.

Nell caught her underlip between her teeth and rose.

"Shan't we go to bed, Denis?" she said wearily.

"Yes, come along. K.K. may as well have the porridge. We've been neglecting you, old lady, haven't we, then?"

The Atom sat rigid, her shocked gaze bent stiffly on Molly's prone head.

"Oh," sobbed Molly, "I shall die—in a week—here—I—hate Aunt Kezia—I hate this house—I hate—everything! Oh, I want mother—and dad—"

The Atom got down stiffly from her chair, her gaze never leaving Molly.

Nell, in pity of the little white face, tried to put Kate Kearney into her arms, but she drew back. "I don't want her," she said.

They crept upstairs and bade each other good night.

"I—I'm sure I'll be dead when I wake up in the morning!" Molly quavered wretchedly. "I—can't breathe—in this place—there isn't room to move—I shall suffocate."

Sheila Pat was to share Nell's room. She followed her in in silence. They undressed quickly. The Atom said her prayers and got into bed. Nell knelt down, but no prayers would come. She knelt and cried into the counterpane.

After a while an austere voice smote upon her ear.

"Nell O'Brien, I'm thinkin' you're keepin' God up very late!"

Nell said a prayer—a somewhat incoherent one—and scrambled into bed.

An hour later she sat up and turned her pillow. She looked across at the little white bed that glimmered over by the window; then she burrowed her head despairingly down into the dry side of her pillow. The sight of it, as she had lifted it to turn it over, had brought to her mind the stout old rector at home. She remembered how Sheila Pat had once earnestly declared he was so nice to lean against—"just like a pillow." She quoted him beneath her breath, a humorous dimple denting her wet cheek.

"'Let us now consider our blessings—never mind the bad things. Let them go. Consider the good things. The bad things will have more than their share of our thoughts, you may be very sure!'" So Nell got her hands into position to tick off her blessings. "First, there's Denis." She paused; her slim body grew tense with sudden horror, as the thought gripped her: "Suppose Denis had gone, too!"

With an impulsiveness that was characteristic she slipped from the bed to the floor, seized up her dressing-gown, ran out on to the landing and upstairs to his room.

"Come in!"

She opened the door and was nearly blown backward down the stairs by the gale that met her.

Denis was sitting up in bed.

"You, old girl? Anything up?"

She stood in the doorway, her dressing-gown streaming out around her, her hair blowing across her face. She laughed uncertainly.

"Come out of that! Shut the door, you goose. And why on earth don't you furl your sails? Anything wrong with the Atom?"

She shut the door with slow care.

"No," she said; "she's pretending to be asleep."

There was a little pause. She buttoned up her dressing-gown slowly.

"You're not walking in your sleep, are you?" he suggested, with a little laugh. He swung himself off the bed and came towards her; he put his hands on her shoulders. "Now, twin, out with it! What did you come for, eh?"

She gave a little childish struggle under his warm hands; she looked up into his face.

"I had to, Denis! A dreadful conviction has come upon me that she'll give us soft-boiled eggs for breakfast!"

He swung her softly to and fro.

"Well, you needn't have come to give me nightmare just because you're going to have it! Was it the action of a twin, I ask?"

She laughed softly, irresistibly.

"Oh, oh, Denis, your floor's swamped! What will Aunt Kezia say?"

He turned his head lazily and surveyed the floor over by the window.

"It'll dry," he observed with equanimity.

She eyed the window, flung as wide as it would go.

"You mustn't have it so wide, Denis! You really mustn't!"

"D'you want to murder your twin? Why, I'd be dying of suffocation! There're roofs all round, Nell! Beastly houses stuck all on top of us—almost in our back yard! I can't get a breath of air even now!"

The toilet cover was wildly fluttering its corners; a towel had been blown from the towel horse and danced merrily in a corner; one curtain was streaming, a wet limp rag, out into the night, the other was whirling in graceful curves across the room; Denis's tie had twined itself round the leg of a chair.

She gave a little laugh.

"If you won't shut the window, I will! And," glancing down at her bare toes, "I don't feel the least bit inclined to paddle just now."

"Then don't."

"But you will shut it—"

"But I won't!"

She looked out into the darkness where the curtain waved forlornly.

"Seriously, Denis—"

"Seriously, Nell, it's in bed you ought to be, not to mention your poor twin!"

"You see, I've got a conscience."

"More noodle you! Go and sleep it off."

"Sure now, asthore, you'll not be refusin' your own twin?" she cooed.

"You're a beastly little humbug!"

He went across to the window and banged it down. The bang echoed startlingly in the night.

"Oh, Denis, you've shut the curtain out!"

"Eh? Oh, well, it can stay out."

A loud whisper hissed with disconcerting suddenness through the keyhole.

"Denis O'Brien, are you asleep?"

Nell turned to him with a little gasp.

"Denis, I—I can't stand any more of her to-night!" Her small fingers caught his arm with sudden desperation.

"Here, in you go!" He picked her up and deposited her in the bed. "Keep quiet," he said peremptorily.

He emitted a loud and very realistic yawn.

"Denis O'Brien!"

"Is it dreaming I am?" he observed in a sleepy voice.

"Apparently you are!" came the sharp retort through the keyhole.

"Is that you, Aunt Kezia?" he queried in a surprised voice. "Isn't it time you were in bed?"

"I wish to speak to you at once!"

"I'm here, close to the keyhole."

"Open the door!"

"Oh! Er—you know—my costume—rather primitive, you know—" His absurd air of coyness brought an irrepressible giggle from the bed.

"Please don't try to be funny! Unlock your door at once!"

"It's never locked at all." He opened it so suddenly that Miss Kezia nearly fell headlong into the room. He caught her in his arms. "Are you hurt? Sure? Well, what is it now? A mouse? Let me go and kill him!"

Miss Kezia had righted herself; she stood, candle in hand, glaring at him angrily. The light flickered over her gaunt face and weird night-cap, over the severe and scanty folds of her sombre dressing-gown.

"I heard a window closed," she began.

"Window? I say, Aunt Kezia, don't be nervous, but—er—don't London burglars generally open windows? Let's find a poker. I," quoth he, bravely, "will protect you."

"It—wasn't you?" Miss Kezia hesitated.

Apparently he did not hear. He was gently but firmly ejecting her from his room. Together they searched the house, but found no suggestion of a burglar. Miss Kezia went back reluctantly to her bed.

"Let us trust she'll be visited with a plague of nightmare burglars!" Denis sent after her cheerfully.

Nell, creeping back to her room, heard through the half-open door a murmur. She looked in, and saw a small pig-tailed figure sitting up in bed clasping something black to its bosom.

"Oh, my own K.K.—did I say I wasn't wantin' you, asthore? 'Twas only because I was frightened I'd cry, like that silly Molly. I didn't mean it, K.K. Oh, I didn't! 'Twas cruel of me to say it, dear—" The murmur was broken, full of tears.

Nell went back softly up a few stairs; then came down again, with a little stumble and an "Oh!"

She could not help an apprehensive thought of Miss Kezia and burglars. When she entered the bedroom Sheila Pat lay still, apparently fast asleep.

Trotting across the floor, back to the petticoat she had purloined from a chair, went a sedate little Kate Kearney.

CHAPTER II

"Four and threepence," said Denis, with his head up the chimney.

"Sure?" said Nell, doubtfully. "I've added it up three times, and it hasn't come to that once."

"Then there's no doubt about it; four and threepence 'tis, my dear!"

A pause. A scream.

"Oh, Denis, rescue them!"

A horrible smell of burning ensued. Denis eyed the smoking stockings with equanimity.

"O dear," sighed Nell, "and there was only one tiny hole in them. It's all your fault, Denis. You shouldn't be rude to me, when your head's such a beautiful target."

But Denis had emerged from the chimney, and was quietly smoking his cigarette in the open room.

"Jolly good idea, old girl. Twig? Every time I want to do a smoke, we'll burn a pair of stockings—they'd out-smell Patsy O'Driscoll's cigars!"

"Denis," Nell spoke with a puckered brow, "how much is five cakes when they're four for threepence halfpenny?"

"Nell, your grammar! It makes me feel faint!"

"'Are,' then. You're only trying to gain time. Oh, Atom, don't move! Kate Kearney's splendid like that. I must get her."

Denis looked over her shoulder as she dashed in a rapid pencil sketch. He glanced across at Molly and winked. It was a family joke that everything Nell began—accounts, sewing, tidying-up—ended, on the slightest possible pretext, in a sketch.

"Oh, Denis," Molly besought nervously, "I know Aunt Kezia will smell your cigarette!"

He struck an attitude.

"I defy her! Shall an O'Brien be cowed by a Scotch woman, and in his stronghold, too? Shall a young man who is also a bank clerk be frightened of a mere ignoramusess—oh, Lor', Molly, hide me—hide me—here she comes!"

Molly flung down the stocking she was darning.

"Oh, Denis!" she gasped, jumping up and knocking over her chair. "Oh—"

But Denis had subsided on to the old lounge, with his head buried in the cushion, and Molly realised she had been "had." She made a wild rush at him, K.K. joined in the fray, and Nell's model was gone.

"Pommel me as much as you like," cried he, weakly. "That's the third time to-day you've swallowed Aunt Kezia!"

"I should think she would be rather indigestible," opined Nell, putting in a few finishing touches. "Denis, what do you think of the way these chrysanthemums have faded? Only two days, and they cost half a crown!"

"I'll get you some more."

Nell looked thoughtful; she stubbed her paper viciously.

"I begin to fancy paupers oughtn't to indulge in flowers."

"Oh, Irish paupers ought," he declared airily.

The Atom arose, shook out her skirts, and proceeded to the door.

"Where are you going, Sheila Pat?"

"Downstairs," was the staid reply.

Once outside, she stopped to smooth her hair; then she stood considering, with a thoughtful brow. She went into her bedroom, dragged a chair to the toilet table, scrambled on to it, and anxiously examined the pair of slim legs displayed in the glass. What she saw displeased her; she stamped angrily, and toppled off the chair with a crash.

"What's up?" came a musical shout from the direction of the "Stronghold."

"Nothin' at all!" responded the Atom, with unabated dignity, though she was obliged for the moment to stand on one leg. She waited a minute, then lifting her loose frock, wiggled round and round in her efforts to unfasten her petticoat. She managed it at last, shook it down to her ankles, and mounted the chair again to view the effect. Her anxious face fell; she sighed heavily, and slowly climbed to the floor. She fumbled at the fastening of her petticoat, pulling it well up, then left the room. She went down the stairs till she reached the last flight that faced the front door. She sat down on the top stair and waited. The dusk deepened; the clock ticked on and on down in the hall, but the little pale face glimmered patiently at the top of the stairs. Presently a key grated in the lock of the door; Sheila Pat rose. The door opened, and a big broad man in a huge ulster came heavily in. Sheila Pat took a dignified step forward, missed, in the dusk, the stair, and rolled down and down to the big man's feet.

"Ach!" exclaimed the big man, and then he made noises that interested Sheila Pat, because they made her think of the hens in Biddy O'Regan's cottage. She rose; her cheeks were scarlet with shame.

"Are you hurrt?" exclaimed the big man.

"Not at all. Please," said the Atom, with a dignity a good deal bigger than herself, "please don't mention it. 'Tis a visit I've come to pay you," she added.

"Ach!" said the big man again.

Over a large and very fierce mustache, all grey bristles, his eyes were twinkling down at her.

"Pray come in," he said, and opened the door of the room opposite the dining room. The Atom's face kindled triumphantly as she looked round. Miss Kezia's grim voice seemed to hover alluringly round the solid mahogany chairs and table.

"You are not to enter this room. Remember, I have forbidden you."

Sheila Pat climbed on to one of the big chairs and sat down with a complacent smile.

Herr Schmidt eyed her anxiously.

"You are quite sure you are not hurt, meine liebe? It was a bad fall, a very bad fall."

Sheila Pat looked surprised. As a matter of fact her left elbow was smarting badly, and her left ankle bone, too, but in the O'Brien phraseology, this did not signify a "hurt." Moreover she objected to his alluding again to her undignified entrance into the hall. She gave her skirts a pull, and turned the conversation.

"How-d'you-do?" she said.

He came forward and gravely shook hands.

"It is ze fine day, hein?" he observed, with a curious elephantine anxiety to be properly polite to his very polite visitor.

The Atom's eyes turned to the window and studied the brilliant pink sky beyond it.

"The fine day, is it? It's not so bad for London," she observed in a disparaging voice.

"You come from Ireland?"

"Yes."

He peered into the rigid little face and understood.

"I come from Shermany," he said gently. "Little one, you will return some day."

The Atom said nothing.

"You haf ze nice little dog." Herr Schmidt changed the conversation cheerfully. "What do you call him?"

"She isn't a him at all," the Atom said scornfully; "'tis herself's a lady! An' her name's Kate Kearney."

"Ach!" said Herr Schmidt.

Sheila Pat looked at him gravely.

"I am very small for my age," she began in an anxious voice. "I'm not very young really. I'm more than six. I'm quite nine weeks more."

"Quite very old," he agreed heartily. "And now you will eat and drink with me, hein?" He was opening a cupboard. "It is a very goot cake. I am what you call an old sweet-teeth. And the drink will not harm you; it is sweet and hot—it is made by my old mother." He poured out two glasses and handed her one.

"We will drink and be friends, eh?"

She hesitated.

"'Tis wondhring I am just what a lodger is," she explained. "I've never met one before, you see. Nell turned up her nose at you and said she'd never be dhramin' Aunt Kezia was so bad as to have a lodger."

"Your aunt is a very kind laty; she allows me to live here, while I am far from Shermany," he said gravely.

The Atom looked interested; after a pause of wonder she dismissed the question of her aunt's being a kind lady, and observed:—

"Is that all? We'll drink then and be friends. I hope you won't mind if I don't love you very much, because you're not Irish, you see."

He declared he would be satisfied with what degree of affection she thought fit to bestow on him. She lifted her glass.

"'Tis Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien I'm called, but you must be callin' me Miss O'Brien."

"Ach, so, of course. And I," he bowed deeply, "am Herr Schmidt, Miss O'Brien."

The Atom's heart rejoiced exceedingly. She put down her glass and slipped off her chair. Gravely she bowed her head, and the pig-tail stuck out with a rakish air of enjoyment. Reseating herself, she politely urged him to have some cake.

"Now we are friends, I will interdruce you to my Snowy-Breasted Pearl, Mr. Hair Smitt. He is very beautiful. I couldn't bring him with me, because, he preferred to stay in his cage." She eyed a red tooth-mark on her forefinger. "He is very high-spirited, you see. He is gold and brown and he has a white breast like pearls and snow, and he is white behind, too—just up over his extremes and both hind legs. Nell has painted him lots of times. You see, in the song, 'the snowy-breasted Pearl' is a lady, but my dear guinea-pig was so 'zact, I crissened him that."

"I wish you would be so goot as to sing the song to me, Miss O'Brien."

"Is it me sing? Oh, yes. But it's rather long. Do you think you'd get tired of it at all?"

He denied such a possibility with horror.

"My mouth is rather full of cake, Mr. Hair Smitt. Do you mind waitin' a little?"

The cake disposed of, she lifted up a sweet little voice, and sang:—

"'There's a colleen fair as May,

For a year and for a day

I have sought by ev'ry way

Her heart to gain.

"'There's no art of tongue or eye

Fond youths with maidens try,

But I've tried with ceaseless sigh,

Yet tried in vain.'"

(Pause.) "I'm afraid I forget some," the Atom confessed, ashamed. "But I know all the parts about my guinea-pig," she added anxiously.

"Will you sing those parts?" he asked courteously.

She began again:—

"'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!"

Nell broke in hastily, "I have spoken to him over the wall."

"So I heard. He is rather lonely. We do not seem to know any nice young people."

Denis suggested, "Used not to know?"

She laughed.

"I stand corrected. Well, I hope we shall soon know very well some very nice young people!" She rose to go.

"Will you come in to-morrow afternoon? Early—about three?"

"Oh, thanks—if Aunt—" Nell looked inquiringly at Miss Kezia.

"I have no objection."

"When will you come, Miss McAlister? It is so long since you have—"

"I have not much time for gadding about, thank you."

"Mind," Mrs. Barclay turned back to the others, "you are all to come!"

Clear and distinct spoke Sheila Pat.

"'Tis engaged I'll be, Mrs. Barclay."

"What do you mean, Sheila?" demanded Miss Kezia, frowning mightily.

"I shall be helping Sarah, thank you."

"What maggot have you got into your head now?"

"'Tisn't a maggot at all," calmly. "I wish to do it. Sarah's a very good girl—for London, that is—and she has too much work entirely."

"Sheila, when I wish you to help in the menial work of the house, I will ask you to do so. Tell Mrs. Barclay at once that you will be very glad to accept her kind invitation."

The Atom heaved a most palpable sigh.

"I will come, then, thank you," she amended her aunt's words.

"Of all the rude little grumps!" Molly attacked her later on.

"I don't care! I do erject to goody-goos!"

"Who is a goody-goo?"

"Why, that silly little Stewart, of course."

"How do you know?"

"Know, is it?" scoffed the Atom. "Hasn't he got big blue eyes and fair hair and a lame leg? Sure I know the sort!" her pig-tail jerking angrily. "And I just can't bear them, Molly O'Brien!"

"I don't see how you can tell. Denis has blue eyes—"

"Oh, Denis!" in a tone of strong contempt for Molly's lack of understanding. "There are eyes and eyes!"

CHAPTER V

"Is my pig-tail quite tidy, Nell?"

"There isn't a hair out of place, Sheila Pat. Atom, do let me do your hair nicely just for once."

"I prefer a pig-tail, thank you."

Nell disappeared into the wardrobe in search of a skirt. When she emerged she stared incredulously at the Atom.

Sheila Pat was wriggling her head into a pink cotton frock.

"What on earth are you putting that on for?"

"I prefer it to that," with a nod at a loose white cashmere frock lying on the bed.

"Are you mad, Sheila Pat? Why, it's November. Where did you dig it up from?"

"One of the trunks. Will you hook it, please, Nell?"

"Indeed, I won't. Take it off at once. Don't be so silly."

"I'm never cold. Do let me wear it, Nell." Sheila Pat laid her delicate little face wheedlingly against Nell's arm. "Do let me."

"I can't, asthore. You'd catch cold."

When the Atom indulged in her rare coaxing she was hard to resist.

"I'll put my coat on, too, Nell!"

But Nell was firm.

"No, Sheila Pat. And why do you want to wear it, anyway?"

"It's just a little longer than that one. Why, I show my knees in that, Nell!"

"What's it matter if you do, you goose?"

"I do not like showin' my knees. And I want pertickly to look grown-up to-day."

"Why?"

"Persons," quoth Sheila Pat, austerely, "can't take liberties with grown-ups. They can't talk to them if you don't wish them to," her pronouns getting somewhat mixed.

"Whom don't you want to talk to you?"

"That little boy—Stewart."

"But why not?" Nell peered at her laughingly through her hair.

"I know him. I've got him at home in that book Mrs. Norton gave me," laboriously wriggling out of the much-desired cotton frock. "He saves up all his pocket money in a money box and buys himself a new coat with it. And he'd sooner learn his Catchykism than play cricket. I know him!"

"Well," said Nell, tying on her hair ribbon, "of all the nasty little hard-hearted wretches you're the worst!"

"Oh, I'm very sorry he's lame," with belated consideration, "but I won't have him talk to me!"

"I don't believe he's a bit goody, poor little chap, and, anyway, why should he want to talk to you?"

This aspect of the case had not struck Sheila Pat. She considered it as she pulled on the cashmere frock.

"Amn't I Irish, then?" she decided gloomily. "Of course he'll want to talk to me."

"I'm going to see how Molly's getting on," Nell said.

In Molly's room chaos greeted her. On the floor stood a drawer, its contents scattered everywhere. The bed was strewn with blouses, hats, a pair of shoes, collars, while Molly herself, red-faced, dishevelled, attired in skirt and petticoat-bodice, was wildly turning out another drawer.

"Ready, Mol?" inquired Nell, blandly.

"Oh, don't, Nell! I can't help it! I can't find my grey blouse—the one with the white piping—I've hunted everywhere!"

"In the box?"

"N-no! I forgot!" making a dash at the dress basket. "Oh, don't laugh, Nell. I looked everywhere else!"

"Of course you did, when we decided to keep all our nicer blouses in there! Do hurry up. Here, I'd better do you up now. Fancy all this fuss just to go next door! I was going in my blue flannel that I had on this morning, but Aunt Kezia gave such stringent orders. Isn't it absurd?"

"Ridiculous. Oh, you're pinching a bit of neck in!"

Nell, at the door, looked back.

"Sure you've got everything? Your hair ribbon?"

"Yes, everything."

When Nell and the Atom were ready they went back to Molly's room. Worse chaos than before greeted them. Molly was crawling under the bed.

"I've lost one of my shoes! Oh, I'm so hot! And now I suppose my nose will get red!"

The Atom, wise beyond her years, found the shoe in a hat box, and they sallied forth.

"Thank goodness, we're not needing hats and things," sighed Nell, "or we'd never start at all!"

"Nell," on the next-door doorstep came an agonised whisper from Molly, "I've forgotten my waist belt!"

In the drawing-room Sheila Pat ensconced herself behind a table, and kept a wary eye on Stewart. Presently his mother sent him across to her. He came and stood in front of her; the Atom gazed over his head.

Nell caught her eye and frowned meaningly.

"Sure, thin, haven't you a tongue at all?" Sheila Pat obediently opened the conversation.

"Y-yes."

"Why aren't ye usin' it, thin?"

"I—I—don't know."

"Well!" said Sheila Pat.

The boy's fair little face flushed scarlet.

"I—I've got a rabbit!" he burst out desperately.

"Um! what colour is it?"

"Fawn and white. Come and look at him."

Sheila Pat hesitated. Longing to see the rabbit fought with disinclination to be alone with Stewart.

"If you'll promise not to talk goody, I'll come," she said cautiously. Suddenly he changed; he turned on her a small, passionate face.

"I don't want you—you little beast!"

Sheila Pat gasped, and grew slowly red.

"You are very rude," she said with tremulous dignity.

"I don't care if I am! D'you think you're the queen or what? I don't want to speak to you. I can't bear you!"

He limped away to the other end of the room.

Sheila Pat sat very still and quiet for a while, then she rose and went after him.

"I think, perhaps, I wasn't very perlite," she said stiffly.

"Come and see my rabbit," he rejoined.

Sheila Pat went with alacrity; she was reflecting satisfiedly that the goody-goo little boy of her imaginings would never have called her "a little beast." Still she was not completely reassured. Together they examined the rabbit, and the Atom told him all about her Pearl, and nothing "goody-gooish" appeared about him. But as they went back to the house for tea, she sounded him cautiously.

"Are you fond of cricket?" keeping a stern eye on his face while she awaited his answer.

He hesitated.

"No," he said.

"I knew it!"

"Awful clever of you!" he muttered sarcastically.

"I s'pose," she went on as they reached the door, "you'd sooner be at your Catchykism now than cricket?"

"Yes," he said.

"I knew it!" gasped the Atom, and fled into the house before him.

From a far corner she presently accosted her hostess.

"Is that a silk blouse you're wearin', Mrs. Barclay?"

"Yes, my dear."

"Did you give more than threepence for it?"

"Sheila Pat!" stammered Molly.

"A little!" Mrs. Barclay's fair little faded face was vividly amused.

"I'm glad you did," with grave approval. "But Sarah's mother only gets threepence for the ones she makes, and she's always ailin', with a large fam'ly of babies and her husband dead and three more dead between Sarah and the next one."

"Who is Sarah?"

"She's just the little maid at Aunt Kezia's. She's a real good worker—for a Londoner, of course, I'm meanin'!"

"And her mother makes blouses?"

"Yes, and only threepence for them, but perhaps they wouldn't be silk."

"No, they wouldn't be silk, but it is shocking to hear how badly they pay for such work."

"Is it at sales?" Nell queried, looking very wise.

Mrs. Barclay smiled.

"Oh, no, my dear. The big shops and wholesale places buy hundreds of blouses that they sell off cheap, and that is what they pay for the making of them. What is that noise?" she broke off.

"It's rats!" opined Stewart, shyly.

But it was Kate Kearney scratching at the door. When she was let in she came, wriggling and wagging, lifting great pathetic eyes to the faces of her own people.

"You bad little K.K.," laughed Nell. "What door did you get in at, I wonder?"

Kate Kearney trotted sedately over to the Atom's corner, and Stewart followed her with a piece of cake.

"Mind she doesn't bite!" jeered the Atom, rudely.

He flushed, but did not answer. He gave K.K. two pieces of cake, then turned politely to Sheila Pat:—

"Would you like to give her some?"

He held out the cake.

His politeness—to her a sure and distasteful sign of goodyness—riled the stormy Atom past bearing.

"Is it afraid you are?" she cried scornfully.

He raised his arm with a sudden fierce gesture and flung the cake straight into her face. It bounced off her small nose and lit with a thud on a chair. In silence they glared at each other for a minute; then he turned to Kate Kearney, thrust his hand right into her protesting mouth, and walked off.

Sheila Pat sat trembling on her chair. Twice that afternoon she had been insulted, and by the goody-goo!

During the leave-takings Sheila Pat and Stewart coldly ignored each other's existence.

In the hall at No. 35 wrath awaited them in the shape of Miss Kezia, who had just returned home from some shopping. She faced them dramatically, her tall, thin figure drawn to its full height.

"You mean to tell me that you left my house, and made an afternoon call on a friend of mine—like that?" she cried, pointing a long and disapproving forefinger at her nieces.

Molly clapped terrified hands to her waist.

Through Nell's mind there darted two lines of one of Denis's nonsense verses:—

"She stood, a tall, and bony queen,

And eyed her subjects very keen."

"What's wrong with us at all?" demanded the Atom, indignantly.

"No hats! No coats! No gloves! House-shoes—"

"Ought we to have put on our outdoor things just to go next door?" exclaimed Nell, opening her eyes wide.

"Of course you ought! It is most reprehensible! You are not in the wilds now! No one thinks of going into the street in London without being properly clothed—"

Nell almost chanted aloud:—

"'Her tongue it wagged, her tongue it wogged,

Her subjects then she up and flogged!'"

"Eileen," Miss Kezia broke off sharply, "don't look so idiotic! You look as if you think it is funny!"

"Do I, aunt?" said Nell, meekly.

"I cannot think how you, at least, did not know better," pursued her aunt.

"You see at home we are as often without hats and things as with them."

"Well, please to remember you are in London now!"

Miss Kezia turned and marched up the stairs.

"'The Queen turned tail and up she went,

Her subjects then their clothes did rent!'"

chuckled Nell, and sank down laughing on to a hall chair.

The Atom disappeared in the direction of her Pearl. It was a cherished conviction, on her part (and on no one else's), that the Pearl moped in her absence.

"Where's that boy Denis, I wonder?" Nell ran up stairs two at a time.

In the Stronghold she found a torn slip of paper on the table: "Off to Lancaster's to dine. Who sneaked my nail-brush?"

"Molly, was it you?"

"Oh, yes, I meant to put it back. Mine tumbled into the slop-pail full of dirty water."

Nell wandered into Denis's room.

"Just like Molly's, only it's masculine chaos instead of feminine!" She laughed softly, and began to tidy up. When Miss Kezia heard of his absence she drew down her long upper lip.

"Who is this Mr. Lancaster?"

"A friend of Pennington's—"

"Mr. Pennington, if you please. Is that all you know about him, Eileen?"

"Well," said Nell, demurely, "'decent sort of chap, I should think ... awfully quiet ... father's got a pot of money—'"

"Eileen O'Brien, how dare you speak vulgar jargon like that to me!"

"Me, aunt?" with injured innocence. "I was only quoting Denis."

"Then kindly do so no more. I object strongly to the tendency of the modern girl to use slangy, slipshod, vulgar English. I will have none of it in my house.

"I hope Denis will not come home late," she pursued. "I do not like his going out in this way—without my permission."

"He isn't a baby, Aunt Kezia! And, anyway, you were out this afternoon."

"Some boy of whom I know nothing—"

Nell interrupted impatiently, "He's a friend of Mr. Tellbridge's! Denis met him there."

"Why didn't you explain that before? Of course Mr. Tellbridge would have no one—Sheila, are you feeding that dog again?"

"Yes, Aunt Kezia."

"Then leave the room at once! You really are a most tiresome little girl!"

The Atom arose and walked from the room. It was her way of obtaining release when she considered a meal had lasted sufficiently long.

"I will not have late hours kept in my house," said Miss Kezia, with a final snap of her lips.

When ten o'clock came and went without bringing Denis, Nell began to grow anxious. Half-past ten was Miss Kezia's hour for going to bed. At twenty-eight minutes past ten she "locked up." She never varied the time by a minute, unless by special arrangement with Herr Schmidt.

Listening behind the door of the Stronghold, Nell heard her lock up as usual and retire to bed. She slipped out and down into the hall. From beneath Herr Schmidt's door there came a thin line of light.

She softly unbarred the chains and lifted down the burglar bell; then she stood listening for Denis's step. Suddenly Herr Schmidt's door opened. Nell, in the darkness of the hall, gazed expectantly at the big figure outlined against the light of the sitting room. She crept back and hid behind a coat hanging on the stand. The next moment hands fumbled against her throat.

"Ur—ur," she gurgled irrepressibly. "Oh, you tickled me!"

Herr Schmidt stumbled back.

"Himmel!" he gasped. "Ach, what is it?"

Nell emerged from the coat.

"Oh, hush! Aunt Kezia will hear you. She mustn't catch me down here."

A door opened overhead. A voice called over the balusters.

"Is that you, Herr Schmidt?"

"Yes, Miss McAlister, it is I. I stumble and make a noise. I beg pardon."

"It is granted. Good night, Herr Schmidt."

"You're a brick, Herr Schmidt," said Nell's pretty voice.

"A brick? A good fellow, is it?"

She nodded.

She stood in the light now, and he looked at her benignly.

"You are playing go-hide-and-find?" he suggested.

She shook her head.

"Hush! I'm waiting for my brother—to let him in. Aunt Kezia never dreams he could be so depraved as to be out after twenty-eight minutes past ten, so she has gone to bed with a serene mind."

He looked rather troubled.

"Your aunt is a worthy lady."

"The horse is a noble animal."

He peered at her through his spectacles in ludicrous bewilderment. Nell was half sitting on, half leaning against, the marble slab of the hall table. Her head was tilted back; the light caught the ends of her roughened hair and turned them into gold, and they made a sort of halo round her mischievous face.

"Well?" she said. "You're not shocked, are you? Why, he's seventeen, Herr Schmidt. And you know if they don't dine till—say—eight o'clock, he can't very well be in by half-past ten, now, can he? Isn't it very rude to rush away as soon as you've eaten all you want? I'm sure I've seen that it is—in a copy-book or somewhere."

"You will, perhaps, do me the great honour of waiting in my room, Fräulein?" he asked, giving up the other question in despair.

"I can't, thanks. I want to hear him come, so that I can stop his knocking, you see."

"I will leaf my door open to gif you a little light, hein?"

"All right, thanks; you might, if you don't mind."

He stood looking down on her in obvious trouble.

"You will be angry if I tell you not to be naughty to your aunt?"

"Oh, no, I won't. It amuses me, Herr Schmidt."

He sighed, and retired to his room. In a few minutes he reappeared, beaming over his spectacles at her.

"See, I haf ze sweets. Young laties like ze sweets, hein?"

He was carrying a little crumpled paper bag with a few fruit drops in one corner. His simplicity touched her. She took two with a hearty "thank you."

"Oh, there he is!" She ran to the door and softly opened it.

"Whence this sepulchral—" Denis began cheerfully.

"Hush!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Bad little boy to be out at eleven o'clock, eh?" he whispered.

"Be quiet, chatterbox!"

"Goot night," said Herr Schmidt.

"Eh?" Denis looked surprised. "I hadn't seen you."

"Herr Schmidt has been keeping me company while I waited for you, Denis."

"Has he? I say, are you allowed to be out after half-past ten, Herr Schmidt?"

"I haf no one belonging to me to care," he said pathetically.

"We'd give him Aunt Kezia," suggested Denis, sotto voce.

They retired upstairs.

"I say, Nell, I'm beastly hungry," he declared.

"Greedy, didn't they give you a good dinner?"

"Rather! Lancaster did the thing in style. Old man's away. Lancaster seems to pretty well boss the show."

"Why are you hungry, then?"

"Well, I've been out since then." He looked at her with twinkling eyes. "Tearing around in a motor makes you hungry, I can tell you!"

"A—motor!"

He nodded.

"Jolly fine one, too. And at this time of night when all the squares are pretty well deserted it is fine."

"How many dogs did you run over?"

"Dozen or so."

"I'd just have thought he'd have a motor!" She couldn't have sounded more scornful if she had said a wheelbarrow.

"Well, can't you give me something to eat, anyhow?"

"The kitchen's unprotected. Let's try."

Downstairs they crept.

"Oh, more bolts!" groaned Nell.

In the kitchen Denis stumbled over the coal-box and sent the coal flying.

"Oh, Lor'—and I've got no matches! Nell!" flinging out and catching her as she stumbled forward.

She subsided on to the chair she had fallen against.

"Don't make such a row. Nell, there's a rat or something running up my leg!"

"Is—is it a beetle, do you think?"

"Very likely."

"Oh, Denis!" she drew her toes up on to the chair.

"Where do people keep matches, Nell?"

"I expect they're locked up!"

"No! Well, I can't go to bed on an empty—um—chest."

"Sleep on your back, then."

"Unfeeling twin! Dash it all, what a beastly hard chimney this is!"

"And what a soft head it came in contact with."

"You're helping a lot, aren't you? Sitting in the seat of the scoffer. Here, come out of that. You've got to help!"

"Denis! Oh, do be quiet!"

He had seized her round the waist. "If you don't promise to help look for those matches, I'll roll you into the scullery where the black beetles live!"

"I promise, Denis!"

She came gingerly forward and gave a scream.

"Denis! I trod on something horrid and soft! Oh, Denis!"

"A rat, I expect. I thought I heard a squeak. Eureka! Got 'em! Now for the larder or pantry or storeroom or whatever it is—"

"I'm going to see what I trod on first. Light a match, Denis!"

He lit one and discovered her standing staring at the floor, her skirts gathered up. "Oh, 'twas an iron-holder!" she cried. "A dear, innocent little iron-holder!"

In the end they found half a loaf of bread and a pot with a little raspberry jam in it. Nell found the jam and was immensely proud of herself.

"By all that's wonderful, a hap'orth of jam in the bottom of a pot! Left out—unlocked—for the first thief to break in and steal!"

"Don't call nasty names. That'll do. I'll be a cripple soon—I've burnt all the tips of my fingers off already. Come along."

Upstairs he sat on his bed and munched bread and jam.

"He's got horses, Nell! One—a ripping chestnut—made me think of Acushla."

He picked a crumb off his knee and ate it thoughtfully.

Her lip curled.

"And he prefers a motor!" she ejaculated.

He did not heed her; he still looked thoughtful.

"But it's a gloomy house, somehow. I think London's a gloomy place. But he's got a room—his own—quite different. You'd go cracked over it. Crammed with carved wood things, Indian, Japanese—ivory, too. And a jolly Grand— Hulloa, what's that?"

A sepulchral whisper came floating up the stairs.

"Are you children not in bed yet?"

He went out on to the landing.

"Just off, Aunt Kezia. Let me carry your candle for you."

"I can carry it myself, thank you. You ought to be in bed and asleep at this time of night."

"Me isn't s'eepy, auntie, weally," he lisped, and Miss Kezia almost relaxed into a smile.

"Nell," he said, returning to his room, "you're to go to bed at once—a baby like you!"

"Oh, oh, have you been talking to her like that?"

"Like what?"

"L-look in the glass!"

He looked and grinned.

"''Twas a grim and gory sight,'" he quoted. "'It hath a manly look which pleases me.'"

"A baby look, you mean. Babies always smear their cheeks with jam."

He was engaged in twisting his tongue out and round in a vain endeavour to catch the smear of jam.

"Nell," advancing his cheek, "lick it off for a chap. Pity to waste it."

She boxed his ear.

"Now I won't buy you a box of Fuller's chocolates!"

She sobered. She was discovering, to her amazement, that money, even when never spent in larger sums than a few shillings or even sixpences, had a mysterious and alarming way of dwindling.

"No more sweets, Denis!"

He went across to the wash-hand stand.

"I was going to buy you a three-shilling box of chocolates, and yet not make our fund a penny the poorer!"

"Is it a riddle?"

He nodded.

"Give it up. It's too late to solve riddles."

He was rubbing at his cheek with a sponge.

"I won it. I, even I, Denis, the twin of Nell, won it in a sweep-stake. Now see how businesslike I've grown, Nell. I pulled off six bob really, but it was a shilling to enter each time—that's two bob—and the time I lost, another, so I reckon I won three altogether. See?"

"What a beautifully easy way to get three shillings!"

"I might have lost two instead. Seems to me there's an idea somewhere there, Nell—work it on a bigger scale, and you'd have me turning those beggars out of Kilbrannan."

"But suppose you lost?"

"Oh, I shouldn't. Anyhow, I'd stand to win so much more than I'd lose. I'm going to think it out. There are places abroad."

"Denis, you'd get taken up! I remember dad reading about a case—"

"Not me," airily.

Nell punched his pillow thoughtfully. "I don't like it, Denis," she decided. "It's too risky, and—and—"

"Well?"

"I'm sure dad and mother would call it gambling! There, I feel like a goody little sister in a book."