Peg O' My Heart Part 41

"You must try and realise that you have an opportunity few girls in your position are ever given. I only hope you will try and repay our interest and your late uncle's wishes by obedience, good conduct and hard study."

"Yes, aunt," said Peg demurely. Then she added quickly: "I hope ye don't mind me not having worn me silk dress, but ye see I couldn't wear it on the steamer--it 'ud have got all wet. Ye have to wear yer thravellin' clothes when ye're thravellin'."

"That will do," said Mrs. Chichester sharply.

"Well, but I don't want ye to think me father doesn't buy me pretty clothes. He's very proud of me, an' I am of him--an'--"

"That will do," commanded Mrs. Chichester as Jarvis came in reply to the bell.

"Tell Bennett to show my niece to the Mauve Room and to attend her,"

said Mrs. Chichester to the footman. Then turning to Peg she dismissed her.

"Go with him."

"Yes, aunt," replied Peg. "An' I am goin' to thry and do everythin' ye want me to. I will, indade I will."

Her little heart was craving for some show of kindness. If she was going to stay there she would make the best of it. She would make some friendly advances to them. She held her hand out to Mrs. Chichester:

"I'm sure I'm very grateful to you for taking me to live with yez here.

An' me father will be too. But ye see it's all so strange to me here, an' I'm so far away--an' I miss me father so much."

Mrs. Chichester, ignoring the outstretched hand, stopped her peremptorily:

"Go with him!" and she pointed up the stairs, on the first landing of which stood the portly Jarvis waiting to conduct Peg out of the family's sight.

Peg dropped a little curtsey to Mrs. Chichester, smiled at Ethel, looked loftily at Alaric, then ran up the stairs and, following the footman's index finger pointing the way, she disappeared from Mrs.

Chichester's unhappy gaze.

The three tortured people looked at each other in dismay.

"Awful!" said Alaric.

"Terrible!" agreed Mrs. Chichester.

"Dreadful!" nodded Ethel.

"It's our unlucky day, mater!" added Alaric. "One thing is absolutely necessary," Mrs. Chichester went on to say, "she must be kept away from every one for the present."

"I should say so!" cried Alaric energetically. Suddenly he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed: "Good Lord! Jerry! HE mustn't see her. He'd laugh his head off at the idea of my having a relation like her. He'll probably run in to lunch."

"Then she must remain in her room until he's gone," said Mrs.

Chichester, determinedly. "I'll go into town now and order some things for her and see about tutors. She must be taught and at once."

"Why put up with this annoyance at all?" asked Ethel, for the first time showing any real interest.

Mrs. Chichester put her arm around Ethel and a gentle look came into her eyes as she said:

"One thousand pounds a year--that is the reason--and rather than you or Alaric should have to make any sacrifice, dear, or have any discomfort, I would put up with worse than that."

Ethel thought a moment before she replied reflectively:

"Yes, I suppose you would. I wouldn't," and she went up the stairs.

When she was little more than half way up Alaric, who had been watching her nervously, called to her:

"Where are you off to, Ethel?"

She looked down at him and a glow, all unsuspected, came into her eyes and a line of colour ran through her cheeks, and there was an unusual tremor in her voice, as she replied:

"To try to make up my mind, if I can, about something. The coming of PEG may do it for me."

She went on out of sight.

Alaric was half-inclined to follow her. He knew she was taking their bad luck to heart withal she said so little. He was really quite fond of Ethel in a selfish, brotherly way. But for the moment he decided to let Ethel worry it out alone while he would go to the railway station and meet his friend's train. He called to his mother as she pa.s.sed through the door:

"Wait a minute, mater, and I'll go with you as far as the station-road and see if I can head Jerry off. His train is almost due if it's punctual."

He was genuinely concerned that his old chum should not meet that impossible little red-headed Irish heathen whom an unkind fate had dropped down in their midst.

At the hall-door Mrs. Chichester told Jarvis that her niece was not to leave her room without permission.

As Mrs. Chichester and Alaric pa.s.sed out they little dreamt that the same relentless fate was planning still further humiliations for the unfortunate family and through the new and unwelcome addition to it.

CHAPTER VI

JERRY

Peg was shown by the maid, Bennett, into a charming old-world room overlooking the rose garden. Everything about it was in the most exquisite taste. The furniture was of white and gold, the vases of Sevres, a few admirable prints on the walls and roses everywhere.

Left to her reflections, poor Peg found herself wondering how people, with so much that was beautiful around them, could live and act as the Chichester family apparently did. They seemed to borrow nothing from their once ill.u.s.trious and prosperous dead. They were, it would appear, only concerned with a particularly near present.

The splendour of the house awed--the narrowness of the people irritated her. What an unequal condition of things where such people were endowed with so much of the world's goods, while her father had to struggle all his life for the bare necessities!

She had heard her father say once that the only value money had, outside of one's immediate requirements, was to be able to relieve other people's misery: and that if we just spent it on ourselves money became a monster that stripped life of all happiness, all illusion, all love--and made it just a selfish mockery of a world!

How wonderfully true her father's diagnosis was!

Here was a family with everything to make them happy--yet none of them seemed to breathe a happy breath, think a happy thought, or know a happy hour.

The maid had placed Peg's scanty a.s.sortment of articles on the dressing-table. They looked so sadly out of place amid the satin-lined boxes and perfumed drawers that Peg felt another momentary feeling of shame. Since her coming into the house she had experienced a series of awakenings. She st.u.r.dily overcame the feeling and changed her cheap little travelling suit for one of the silk dresses her father had bought her in New York. By the time she had arranged her hair with a big pink ribbon and put on the precious brown silk garment she began to feel more at ease. After all, who were they to intimidate her? If she did not like the house and the people, after giving them a fair trial, she would go back to New York. Very much comforted by the reflection and having exhausted all the curious things in the little Mauve-Room she determined to see the rest of the house.

At the top of the stairs she met the maid Bennett.

"Mrs. Chichester left word that you were not to leave your room without permission. I was just going to tell you," said Bennett.