Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 46

"How he dare!--how he dare--!" a slipper crashed into the fireplace.

"Anything for novelty. I suppose he thinks he will amuse himself with me next! He talks as if he imagines I am merely playing--as if a little coaxing and cajolery--he's--he's--bother these tangles!" and the beautiful hair began to suffer badly from its owner's perturbed frame of mind. "But he'll soon find he's mistaken,"--the hairbrush missed the window by half-an-inch, and fell into the water-jug: "Oh! if only I were a man and could fight him!--But I'm a Dublin Fusilier General's daughter--and I ought to know something about fighting!" Over went a chair backward, bringing down a small table laden with photo frames.

"I'll be even with him yet--the sweep!" with which she dived under the bedclothes, as if she were a whole regiment of Fusiliers storming a position.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

ROBERT MORONY ON CHURCH RESTORATION.

It was not until the second week in August that Paddy was able to start on her summer holiday, and then she journeyed to Omeath to pay her long-counted-on visit to the Parsonage.

Eileen and her mother and the two aunties were all at the little station awaiting her, when the train drew up soon after seven in the morning, and, like some small terrier beside itself with excitement, Paddy almost fell headlong, upon the top of them all. From the very instant she caught sight of her old friend the giant on Carlingford Mountain she threw off all cares, all recollections of London, all responsibilities, and stepped into the Omeath train almost the identical, headstrong, happy-go-lucky Paddy of eighteen months ago. Such a hand-shaking there had been at Greenore, for she knew all the railway porters and the station officials and everyone connected with the hotel, and, judging from the greetings, they were as pleased to see her as she them. At Omeath the others began to wonder what time they would manage to get her as far as the Parsonage, for every man, woman, and child had to be talked to and shaken hands with.

There was a great spread for breakfast--everything that they knew she liked best and poor Paddy had to taste something of each dish to please them, until she was obliged to impress them politely that she had reached the utmost limit of her capacity. After breakfast she and Eileen went off on an exploring expedition through the village. At the church gate they met the s.e.xton, old Robert Morony, a sort of monument of longevity to the village.

"I've been to see the restorations, Robert," cried Paddy joyously.

"Doesn't the church look lovely!"

"It do, indaid, Miss Paddy," answered the old man, shaking hands with unmistakable pleasure. "Faith! did ye iver see sich a luvely place o'

wars.h.i.+p afore? An' everythin' so compact lik'! What I mean, nothin'

stunted."

"I should think not, Robert. Trust Aunt Jane and Aunt Mary to do a thing thoroughly if they undertake it. When I heard the church was to be restored by them, I said, 'Begorra! that'll be an edifice to be proud of now!'"

Robert chuckled with delight.

"But shure, an' you don't see the half," he explained eagerly. "It's all them nice things you don't see as so pleases me. Now would you belaive--there's actually twelve new dusters! positively bran' new, all folded as neat an' trim-lik' an' put away where no one can see 'em. Now that's what I call restoring a church properly--indaid, I just luve the sight of 'em."

"I quite agree with you, Robert," and Paddy's eyes twinkled rarely.

"It's the things I can't see, that I love to look at."

"Egzactly," with growing excitement. "_I_ ought to 'a' showed you roun', Miss Paddy, 'cos I knows where everythin' bides. Why, there's six new lamp gla.s.ses, all a-lying there case o' accidents, wrapped up in beautiful tissue paper. I'd a-lik' you to see they lamp gla.s.ses. Oh!

an' the new iron safe," getting almost beside himself. "Did ye see 'im a-sittin there in the vestry, on all they hymn books, all neatly stacked underneath, looking as important like as if 'e knew 'e was livin' in one o' the foinest churches in ould Oireland?"

"When an iron safe sits on hymn books, what do you suppose hatches out?"

murmured Paddy wickedly to Eileen.

"Did ye see the new bell rope?" ran on Robert, waving his stick about in a somewhat dangerous fas.h.i.+on to eyes and noses. "A brave wee bit o'

rope that--strong 'nough to hang a man, as I says to Andrew Murphy. The blue ceiling with the yellow stars is all very well, and the new altar, and the winder with the angels playin' on real Oirish harps--but 'tis all a bit popish to my thinkin'--and I lik' that brave wee rope, and they lamp gla.s.ses in tissue paper, and they twelve bran' new dusters the best. Faith! 'tis meeself should have shown ye roun'. I'm shure ye didn't see the half. Did ye notice the new tumbler o' wather for 'is rivirence to drink from when 'is sermons is too long-winded for 'im?

Faith! we did make a job of it. Ivery 'ole and corner turned out and clained. Shure, it's meeself did the back seat by the font, and to my sartin knowledge it 'adn't been cleaned out this ten or twelve year.

Niver more'n about once since I've had the cue o' the edifice this forty year."

This finished Paddy, and with a hasty farewell she sped off to the beach for her first sail; later on in the day writing Jack a long epistle upon Robert Morony and the church restoration, which Jack read lying at full-length on his back on the gra.s.s a month later; and his shouts of laughter brought his colleagues round to beg a share of the fun.

Two days later Eileen and her mother left for Dublin, and Paddy became the spoiled darling of the Parsonage.

She went everywhere just as of old, and though for a little while she avoided Mourne Lodge, not wis.h.i.+ng to meet Lawrence, she soon found her strategic position untenable, and was obliged to yield to the insistent persuasions of Kathleen and Doreen, who began to look genuinely puzzled and distressed over her extraordinary reluctance to visit them.

Then she decided to take the bull by the horns, and instead of putting their first encounter off any longer, seek it purposely, and _get_ it over. With this end in view she bicycled to Mourne Lodge, in a more or less ferocious frame of mind, once more to confound the enemy. As it happened, however, the enemy had seen fit to change its tactics, and instead of the new graciously polite Lawrence, there was only the old casual, indifferent looker-on. Paddy, with all her artillery in readiness, was for once non-plussed. "How do, Paddy!" he said coolly, when he joined them at tea, and sat down as far from her as possible, and commenced playing with his dogs, taking no further notice. Of course it is one thing to have all your guns in readiness and get a few good round shots in, and quite another to be calmly and loftily ignored, and Paddy's instant impulse was to hurl every portable article within reach at his head. To make matters worse, she was furiously aware that she had blushed crimson when he first appeared, and that he had probably seen it, and drawn his own conclusions. To show him she did not care, she fired one or two shots at him at random, but the result, as she ought to have foreseen, was only a further a.s.sumption of the very indifference that irritated her. He looked at her as if she were not there, and maintained, for the most part, his habitual silence.

Neither did it prove to be for that day only, but each time she came.

There was just a casual greeting, and then silence, and he declined all part in their daily excursions.

Paddy told herself she was relieved he had at last realised it was useless to try and make friends; but at the same time it was rather dull without Jack, or Eileen, as she could not always be off to friends, and she almost wished they could have just one battle-royal to liven things up a little. It was all very well to have no parleying with the enemy, but that did not mean one would be content to sit down quietly in sight of the enemy's lines, and never so much as fire a shot; certainly not for an Irish Fusilier's daughter. She was vaguely wis.h.i.+ng for this encounter the day she paddled about alone in Jack's little skiff, because it had been too wet to bicycle to Newry, and she looked a little doleful, until another skiff, impelled by long, smooth strokes came out of the sunlight and drew near.

She watched it coming, admiring the long, even strokes, and wondering a little fitfully, who was its occupant. As it came nearer, she recognised Lawrence's thin profile, and lean, muscular figure, she felt a sudden quickening of her pulse, and a half hope that there was a chance of a skirmish. Or would he row straight past and merely throw her a casual greeting?

On and on came the skiff, and still the long even strokes--evidently he was going straight by. Two strokes away, however, he suddenly stopped pulling and leaned on his oars. The boat drifted up beside hen. Paddy got her guns ready.

"Hullo!" he said casually. "I thought you were playing in the tennis tournament this afternoon."

"I was knocked out first round," trying to speak as casually as he, but with a sudden inflection of regret she could not wholly stifle.

"Were you?" in some surprise; "that's a new experience for you!"

"I am out of practice."

"Don't you play in London?"

"No."

"Why not?" rolling himself a cigarette.

"I have no opportunity."

"You must miss it a good deal."

She was silent.

"I suppose you'll be going back soon?" going on with his cigarette with a resolutely cold, impa.s.sive air.

"Yes! I haven't much more than a week left." She fidgeted restlessly.

This impa.s.sivity was too maddening.

"You won't like that?"

It was because the mere thought nearly made her cry, that she replied jauntily:

"Oh! I don't mind much. I'm getting used to London now."

Still he would not look up.

"Shepherd's Bush is hardly London," a little cruelly.

"Anything is London that is not Omeath," she retorted.

He smiled a little to himself. "I thought you had just implied that you rather liked London."

"I said I didn't mind going back. I don't; Mother and Eileen will be there." She flashed one of her old glances at him, but he was still too much occupied to look up. It made her vaguely angry. There was no necessity to treat her as if she were a wooden post. She cast about in her mind for a bone of contention, and at just that moment Lawrence finished rolling his cigarette, struck a match, and lit it.