Paddy The Next Best Thing Part 5

"I said that if you bought picture post-cards and had a lovely smile you must be a nincomp.o.o.p."

Ted threw his head back and shouted with laughter, exclaiming, "That's the best of all, and I quite agree with you!" Then they ran up against the landing-stage, and he hurried her out of the boat and along the road to his aunt's as fast as she would go.

"My dear child!" was all Mrs Masterman said, when she saw her, and without another word bustled her off upstairs, and flew to prepare a hot bath.

"It's nothing new," she explained in answer to Ted's queries later, shaking her head drolly. "She's just the wildest harum-scarum that ever breathed, and her father positively delights in it. I must take you to call. He'll laugh himself nearly ill over this escapade, but for my part, I think he would do better returning thanks for the mult.i.tudinous times she has been given back to him, from the very gates of death."

"But she wouldn't have been drowned to-day, aunt. She could have swum ash.o.r.e."

"She might have had cramp, or caught her death of cold, or a hundred other things. It's dreadful, to my thinking, for a girl to be so absolutely a boy in everything. But there! she's young yet, and I daresay she'll improve by and by."

Ted, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, staring across the Loch, had an odd, inward conviction that there was no room for improvement, but this he kept to himself, asking instead of her father and home.

A little later, he made their acquaintance, as his aunt decided to keep Paddy all night, and sent him to The Ghan House with a note of explanation. Jack and Eileen were just returning from the Parsonage as he arrived, and while Mrs Adair read the note aloud to the General, out on the lawn where they were sitting, the two young people sauntered up.

"Lord love us!" exclaimed the General gleefully; "was there ever such a girl before! Capsized, did she?--right out by Greenore!--managing the boat alone, too!--and out there a day like this--by my faith a good-plucked one! Here, Jack! you young scoundrel! why weren't you out with Paddy this afternoon? Here she's been getting capsized right out by Greenore and fished out of the water by this young man, while you were wasting cartridges trying to hit snipe.

"Here's my hand, sir," turning to Ted and giving him a hearty hand-shake, "and an old soldier's thanks and blessing, and if there's anything I can do for you at any time just name it. Lord! what a girl she is!" he finished, and held his sides and shook with laughter.

Meanwhile Mrs Adair added her thanks in a low, eager voice, asking anxiously after Paddy's welfare; and Jack took stock of the stranger generally.

When he had finished rea.s.suring Mrs Adair concerning her daughter, and rea.s.serting that he had really done nothing at all deserving of thanks, Ted returned Jack's scrutiny with almost as great interest, wondering if this handsome young Irishman were Paddy's brother.

"Let me introduce you to _my_ eldest daughter," said Mrs Adair.

"Eileen, this is Mr Masterman from Dunluce."

Eileen shook hands with her usual charming smile, and then Mrs Adair introduced Jack, who, after a little further scrutiny, started on his favourite topics of shooting and sailing, and finding Ted as interested as himself, they quickly became good friends.

"Your daughter called out something about returning in the morning," Ted said to Mrs Adair, as he prepared to leave. "Some fishermen have been out for the boat this afternoon, so very likely she will return in it."

"Perhaps you will accompany her," said Mrs Adair at once. "_We_ shall be delighted to see you to lunch if you will."

Ted thanked her and accepted the invitation gladly, then hurried back with various portions of Paddy's belongings to Carlingford, hoping vaguely that she might have insisted upon getting up and coming down to dinner. Manlike, he had quite forgotten she could hardly appear without a dress, and he felt quite unreasonably disappointed when he found the table only laid for three, and he and his uncle and aunt sat down together.

"I took the precaution of locking Paddy's door," Mrs Masterman remarked, as they sat down. "I know what a terror she is to manage, and after such a wetting it is most important that she should remain in bed for the rest of the day."

She had scarcely finished speaking when an apparition in the doorway, clothed in an a.s.sortment of odds and ends of borrowed garments, and with a face wreathed in smiles, remarked: "I wish roses hadn't thorns.

Coming down the spout was child's play, but the beastly thorns on the rose creeper have quite spoilt my elegant hands."

Mrs Masterman's arms went up in horror, but the depressed rescuer was instantly all smiles likewise, while he made room for her in his seat.

"If you'd known me as well as my own father does," Paddy replied to her hostess' expostulations, "you'd as soon have thought of putting me down the well, as locking me in a 'common or garden' bedroom. There's always a spout, or a coping, or a bow-window with leads, or something. How do you do, Colonel Masterman?" extending her hand graciously. "I couldn't be expected to stay upstairs, with such delicious odours coming from the kitchen, could I now?"

"Why, of course not, of course not," exclaimed her host, who vied with her father in enjoying all her adventures; "you must be very hungry after such an adventure."

"I should just think I am--_ravenous_!"

"But my dear, there is a tray all ready for you, and I was just going to send your dinner upstairs."

"I know you were, and you are very sweet and kind, but I've got an odd failing about meals. I simply can't eat, however hungry I am, if I'm alone. It's quite terrible, you know," looking abnormally serious. "I might be ready to eat myself with hunger, and if I'm all alone I couldn't take one single bite."

"A lucky thing for yourself," laughed Colonel Masterman, "though not, perhaps, for anyone who chanced to be with you--for you'd be quite certain to begin on them first."

"It would depend upon who it was, and if they were nice and plump."

"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs Masterman in a shocked voice; "what a dreadful idea!"

"Then we'll change the subject," said Paddy, adding roguishly, "Do you like picture post-cards, Mr Masterman?"

"I think people are very wanting in taste and very out-of-date who don't," he answered promptly; "but perhaps in an out-of-the-way place like this you have not yet seen many?"

"On the contrary," sweetly, "we have seen so many that we are positively sick of the very sight of them. I'm thinking of starting a society, like the one in New York, for suppressing the tune called 'Hiawatha,'

only mine will be directed against the post-card craze."

"But I think they are so beautiful," said Mrs Masterman, looking up from her plate with a puzzled expression. "Really! sometimes I can hardly tear myself away from Linton's, they have such beautiful specimens."

"No? Well, you must take Mr Masterman with you to-morrow. He'll simply love it, and he won't know how to tear himself away either.

Colonel Masterman will have to come by the next train to try and lure you both home again."

Ted Masterman's expression had a "wait-till-I-catch-you" air, but she only went off into an airy description of her youthful admirer on the tennis court, which lasted until the two elder ones retired to their books, leaving her and Ted to amuse each other over their coffee in the conservatory. Paddy at once opened fire with a cross-examination.

"So you live in London?" she remarked; "seems to me one might as well live in a coal mine."

"Oh, come! that's rather strong; London is a grand place."

"It's a good thing you think so, since you live there. I loathe the very name of it."

"But why?"

"Why? Everything's why. Look at the dirt, and the smoke, and the s.m.u.ts," in a tone of unutterable disgust. "On a fine day the poor sun struggles to s.h.i.+ne through the atmosphere, and only succeeds in giving a pale, sickly glow, and on a wet day the clouds appear to literally rest on the house-tops and rain-s.m.u.ts. If you look up, you see nothing but roofs and chimneys, and if you look down, you see nothing but paving-stones and bas.e.m.e.nts, and if you look round generally, you see little else but pale, sickly, tired people all trampling on each other to live."

"Didn't you ever look in the shops?"

"Yes, and I got so sick of them, I just longed to go inside the windows and jumble everything up into a heap anyhow, and then write a big 1 s.h.i.+lling 11 pence farthing over the whole lot.

"The only thing I really enjoyed," running on, "was the front seat on the top of an omnibus, with a talkative driver. That was always funny, whether he discoursed on politics, or religion, or the aristocracy; or expressed himself forcibly on motor-cars and the 'Twopenny Tube.' Do you use the Tube much?"

"Nearly every day of my life."

"Goodness!--and you still live! Don't you think Dante must wish he had thought of a Tube for his Inferno? It must be like Heaven to come here and sniff our lovely mountain air all day long. I wonder you don't go about with your nose in the air too busy sniffing to speak."

"It reminds one of what one might imagine Heaven, in various ways," he said, with smiling innuendo.

"Eileen and mother might stand for the angels," she ran on, "and Jack for the prodigal son or penitent sinner."

"And where would you be?"

"Well, I guess I'd be most useful helping Saint Peter keep the door,"