"What _is_ the matter?" queried Bridgie once more, and this time there was a touch of testiness in her voice, for it was trying to have her efforts treated with such want of appreciation, and even if the dish were not all that could be desired, consideration for her feelings might have kept her brothers silent before a stranger. "Miles, _you_ taste it!" she cried, and Miles smacked his lips for a thoughtful moment, and p.r.o.nounced st.u.r.dily--

"It's very good!"

Sylvia groaned involuntarily; she could not help it, and Jack gasped with incredulous dismay, staring at his brother as if he could not believe his senses.

"Well, I always did say that there was nothing in this wide world which would quell your appet.i.te, but this beats everything! Take another spoonful--I _dare_ you to do it!"

"All right, here goes! It's a very good mixture," said Miles complacently, swallowing spoonful after spoonful, while his _vis-a-vis_ looked on with distended eyes, and Pat stood transfixed upon the threshold. As for Bridgie, her face brightened with relief, and she smiled upon her younger brother with grateful affection.

"That's right, Miles; never mind what they say! You are the greatest comfort I have. Some people are so saucy there is no pleasing them.

You and I will enjoy it, if no one else will."

So far she had prudently refrained from experimenting on her own account, but now she took up her spoon, and there was a breathless silence in the room while she lifted it to her lips. It fell back on the plate with a rattle and clang, and an agonised glance roamed round the table from one face to another.

"Oh--oh--oh! How p-p-p-perfectly awful! What can have happened? It was so nice when I left it! Has anyone"--the voice took a tone of indignation--"have any of you boys been playing tricks on me?"

"How could we, now, if you think of it? We have been upstairs or in the drawing-room ever since we came back. It's not the will that's wanting, but the opportunity!" cried the boys in chorus; but it was not a time for joking, and Bridgie smote upon the table-gong with a determined hand.

"Then it must be Sarah's fault. She has done something to it. It is too bad--I took such pains!" She looked pathetically at the red marks which still lingered on her fingers from that painful cutting and sc.r.a.ping, and there was a distinct air of resentment in the voice in which she questioned her a.s.sistant a moment later.

Sarah was a round-faced, vacant-looking damsel of sixteen summers, who had come straight from an industrial home to serve in the O'Shaughnessy family. She was scrupulously clean, admirably willing, and so blindly obedient that in the bosom of the family she was known by the t.i.tle of "Casabianca." She understood to a nicety how to dust and sweep, make beds and turn out a room, but the manners and customs of gentlefolk had been an unknown science to her before entering her present situation, and anything that Bridgie chose to do was, in her eyes, a demonstration of what was right and proper. She adored her young mistress, and trembled at the new tone of severity in which she was addressed.

"Please, ma'am, I did nothing at it!"

"But something has happened to it, Sarah--that's quite certain. Think now--think carefully what you have done since I left the kitchen. I am not angry, only anxious to find out what has gone wrong."

It was really most embarra.s.sing. The three young gentlemen were watching her with laughing eyes, the pretty young lady in the pink dress was staring at her plate and twisting her lips to keep from smiling, the Missis sat up straight in her chair and looked so grave and masterful.

Like Topsy of old, Sarah tried hard to find something to confess, but failed to recall any delinquencies.

"I took it out of the oven when you said, and put it on a plate. I brought it into the room--"

"You are quite sure you didn't let anything fall into it by mistake?"

"Please, ma'am, there was nothing to fall. I had tidied the things away before I touched it. I put the macaroni sticks back in the bag and the beeswax along of the turpentine for to-morrow's cleaning--all that you didn't use for the pudding."

"The--the--what?" gasped Bridgie breathlessly.

But the next moment a great burst of laughter all round the table greeted the solution of the mystery. Pat capered about the floor, Jack put his elbows on the table and peered at Sylvia with dancing eyes, Miles undauntedly helped himself to another spoonful, and wagged his head as who should say that, beeswax or no beeswax, he stuck to his favourable verdict on the "mixture." Bridgie's soft, gurgling laugh was full of unaffected enjoyment.

"Did ever I hear the like of that? It was a lump of beeswax, and I mistook it for cheese! It looked just like it--so smooth, and yellow, and hard--too hard, maybe--but I was blaming Mary for that, not the cheese, and thinking myself so good and economical to use it up!

Beeswax and macaroni! Oh--oh--I'll never forget it while I live!"

"It's a very pretty nose you've got, dear, but it's not much use to you, I'm afraid," said Jack teasingly. "Did it never occur to you one moment that it was rather highly scented, and the scent a little different from the ordinary common or garden cheese?" and Bridgie shook her head in solemn denial.

"Never the ghost of a suspicion! It shows how easily our senses are deceived when we get a fixed idea in our heads; but indeed you were not much cleverer yourselves. Every man of you had something to say about the smell, but not a hint of what it was!"

"I thought it was rather spring-cleaningey," Sylvia said mischievously.

"Never mind, Bridgie dear--it has been a great success. I do feel so much at home--more so than I should have done after a dozen formal dinners where everything went right. I shall always remember it too, and how Mr Miles declared it was nice!"

"Don't call him 'Mr,' please! He is only seventeen, though he _is_ the champion eater of the world. I wonder what exactly is the effect of beeswax taken internally! You must tell us all about it, Miles, if you live to the morning!"

"How pleased Pixie will be!" murmured Bridgie reflectively, leaving her hearers to decide whether she referred to Miles's problematical disease or the latest culinary disaster, and once again Sylvia admired the happy faculty of seizing on the humorous side of a misfortune which seemed to be possessed so universally by the O'Shaughnessy family.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A HAPPY INSPIRATION.

Mrs Geoffrey Hilliard stood in the long gallery of Knock Castle and drummed wearily on the window-pane with a white, heavily-ringed hand.

It had rained for a whole week without stopping, and for the happiest girl in the world, as she proclaimed herself to be at least three times a day, she came perilously near feeling shedding tears of depression.

Geoffrey was out shooting, and the old Castle seemed full of ghosts-- ghosts of the living, not of the dead--of those dear, gay, loving, teasing, happy-go-lucky brothers and sisters who had filled the rooms with echoes of song and laughter. Geoffrey was the dearest of husbands, but he had one great, insuperable failing--he was not Irish, and one phase of his wife's character was even yet an inexplicable riddle in his eyes. Why should she consider it monotonous to have her meals served regularly at a stated hour; why should she find infinite enjoyment in arranging a festivity in a rush and scramble, instead of making her plans with due leisure and decorum; why should she wear the latest Paris fashions on a day when the thermometer pointed to rain, and walk about in the sunshine in an ulster and deerstalker?--these, and many similar questions, were as puzzling to him as the fact that she found it absolutely impossible to do a thing twice over in the same way, or to master the very rudiments of method.

Geoffrey inherited the business instincts which had made his fathers successful above their compet.i.tors, and when he had become temporary owner of Knock, he had striven hard to introduce order and punctuality into the establishment, with more success in the servants' hall than in those regions where the mistress reigned supreme.

Esmeralda was a devoted wife, who would have gone through fire and water to ensure his happiness; she would have shared his poverty with a smiling face, and have worked her fingers to the bone on his behalf, but she seemed quite incapable of replacing the match-box on his dressing- room mantelpiece when she had borrowed it for her own use, or of refraining from taking his nail-scissors downstairs and then forgetting where she had put them.

Geoffrey on his part adored his beautiful wife, and would have fought a dozen dragons on her behalf, but when he groped in the dark for his matches, and knocked his pet ornaments off the chimney-piece, and barked his knee against a chair, and tried vainly to get out of the room through a blank wall--well, he was only a man after all, and he was not precisely lamb-like in temper.

Some such incident had happened this afternoon when the husband had made a complaining remark, and the wife had poured oil on the troubled waters by murmured allusions to people who were not really men, but "finnicky old maids." Geoffrey had stalked majestically from the room, leaving Esmeralda to reflect sadly how very unsatisfactory it was to quarrel when your adversary was dignified and English. With either of her three brothers such an introduction would have meant an enjoyable and lengthy wrangle; even "Saint Bridget" could snap on occasion, while Pixie was capable of screaming, "It is not--it is not!" until her breath failed, for pure love of contradiction.

Esmeralda yawned, and wondered what in the world she could do to while away the long afternoon. As the wife of a millionaire, with a professional cook in the kitchen who tolerated her mistress's incursions at stated hours only; with a wardrobe full of new clothes, and a French maid to sew up every hole almost before it made an appearance; with a gardener who did not like interference, and a patriarchal butler who said, "Allow me, madam!" if she dared to lift a hand for herself, life was not really half so amusing as in the dear old days, when she could make potato cakes for tea, re-trim old dresses, with Bridgie as model, and sit perched on one of the empty stages in the conservatory, while Dennis confided his latest love experiences and the gossip of the countryside.

Esmeralda had longed for riches all her life, and for the most part found the experience to her taste, but there were occasions when she felt fettered by the golden chains. When Bridgie wrote of her experiences in that funny, cramped little house, of her various devices for making sixpence do duty for a shilling, of excursions about London, when she rode with the boys on the tops of omnibuses and dined luxuriously at an ABC, it was not pity, but envy, which filled Esmeralda's bosom as she drove in state behind coachman and footman to pay dull, proper calls on the county magnates.

It was cold and dark in the gallery this December afternoon, so she went downstairs into the room which had been dedicated to lessons, when Miss Minnitt the governess tried to instil knowledge into half a dozen ignorant heads. It was now metamorphosed into a luxuriant little boudoir, with pots of hothouse plants banked on the table, a couch piled with silken cushions taking the place of the old horsehair sofa, a charming grate, all glowing copper and soft green tiles, and beside it a deep arm-chair and a pile of books to while away an idle hour.

Esmeralda yawned and flicked over the pages of the topmost of the pile, looked at the beginning to see if it promised excitement, peeped at the last sentence of all to make sure there was no heart-breaking separation, finally sank down into the chair, and settled herself to read.

There was something wanting for perfect enjoyment, however, for in the old days she and Bridgie had agreed that the charms of an interesting book could only be thoroughly appreciated to an accompaniment of crisp sweet apples. Esmeralda O'Shaughnessy had been wont to climb up into the loft and bring down as many rosy baldwins as she could carry in the crown of her cap; but Mrs Geoffrey Hilliard crept down her own pa.s.sages like a thief, listened breathlessly at the pantry door to make sure that Montgomery was absent, then abstracted an apple from each of the two pyramids of fruit already prepared for dinner, and flew back to her room, aghast at her own temerity.

The presence of the apples seemed to bring back other schoolgirl impulses, for instead of seating herself in dignified, grown-up fashion, she stretched herself on the rug before the fire, her back supported against the chair, her head drooping ever nearer and nearer the cushions, as warmth and quiet wrought their usual work. She slept and dreamt, and awoke with a start to hear a voice observing, "Tea is served, madam!" and to see Montgomery the immaculate standing over her with an unmoved expression, as if, in the many n.o.ble families in which he had served, it was an invariable custom to find his mistress fast asleep on the floor, with a half-gnawed apple in her hand!

Esmeralda crawled to her feet, trying vainly to look dignified, but she had no appet.i.te for m.u.f.fins. She felt like a child who has been found out, and blushed at the thoughts of her embarra.s.sment that evening when the fruit pyramid was handed for her selection. Tea did not taste half so nice out of the Queen Anne silver as when it had been poured from the old brown pot, which had to be refilled so many times to satisfy clamorous appet.i.tes, and the longing for companionship made her hurry through the meal, and run upstairs to a wide room overlooking the park.

With the opening of the door came that sweet, flannely, soapy, violet- powdery smell which is a.s.sociated with a well-kept nursery, and there on the rocking-chair sat Mistress Nurse with a bundle of embroidery on her knee, which purported to be O'Shaughnessy Geoffrey, the heir of the Hilliards.

"Oh, I'm so glad you have come, ma'am! I did so want you to see him.

He has been so pert this afternoon. I don't know what to do with him, he is so pert! I never saw such a forward child for his age!"

Esmeralda's face softened to a beautiful tenderness as she turned down the Shetland shawl and looked at her little son. The pert child had a fat white face, with vacant eyes, a b.u.t.ton of a nose, and an expression of preternatural solemnity. His head waggled helplessly from side to side as his nurse held him out at arm's length, and stared fixedly into s.p.a.ce, regardless of his mother's blandishments.

"There now, _isn't_ he pert?" repeated the triumphant nurse. "You know your mammie, my precious--yes, you do! The cleverest little sing that was ever seen! He will begin to talk, ma'am, before he is many months old, I'm sure he will! I was speaking to him just now, and he tried so hard to copy me. I said 'Goo-oo!' and he said 'Coo-oo!' Oh, you would have loved to hear him! He is a prince of babies, he is! A beautiful darling pet!"

Esmeralda beamed with maternal pride.

"He _is_ clever!" she cried. "Fancy talking at three months old! I must write and tell Bridgie. And he looks so intelligent, too--doesn't he, nurse? So wise and serious! He stares at the fire as if he knew all about it. I believe his hair has grown since yesterday! I do, indeed!"

"He has beautiful hair--so fine! It's going to curl, too," declared the optimistic nurse, holding the child's head against the light, when the faintest of downs could be dimly discerned across the line of the horizon. "He will smile in a moment if you go on talking to him, ma'am.