Paddy-The-Next-Best-Thing.

by Gertrude Page.

CHAPTER ONE.

CONCERNING PADDY'S BLOUSE.

Paddy Adair, the "next-best-thing," as she was fond of calling herself, and the reason for which will appear hereafter, sat at the table, and spread all around her were little square books of "patterns for blouses," from which she was vainly endeavouring to make a selection.

Meanwhile she kept up a running conversation with the only other occupant of the room, a girl with dreamy eyes of true Irish blue, who sat in the window, motionless, gazing across the Loch at the distant mountains. She heard no word of all her sister was saying, but that did not appear to trouble Paddy in the least, so doubtless it was not an unusual state of affairs.

"This one with green spots and pink roses would look the best with my blue skirt," Paddy said, holding one pattern at arm's length and surveying it critically, "but the blue one with the white border would look better with my grey. I wonder which you would choose, Eily? I wonder which would be the most becoming to my peculiar style of beauty, or," with a twinkle in her eyes, "I should say the most concealing to my unique lack of it. I think I'll risk the green spots and pink roses, because it doesn't really look half bad with the grey.

"Oh, but my hat!" with a comical exclamation of dismay, "there's my silly old hat has got pansies in it, and they'd look just awful with the green and pink, Eileen! What _am_ I to do, with all my things different colours, that don't seem any of them to go together? I wonder if I'd better bring out my whole wardrobe and go through the hundred and one patterns again? Or shall I have a white-bordered thing, that is not particular and will go with just all of them? Only I'd have to start at the beginning to find it, and I'm so sick of the very sight of them.

Here have I had these patterns three days, and I've already spent about five pounds' worth of brain-power upon a blouse that will cost five shillings. If only you'd help, Eileen!" looking up toward the figure in the window, "instead of staring at those silly old mountains like a stuffed goose!

"Eileen!"--as the dreamer took no notice--"Eileen! do you hear that I'm floundering in a sea of patterns! Your one and only sister, and you sit there like an Egyptian mummy stuffed with dried peas!

"I'll make you help--so there,"--and with a sudden movement she swept all the books of patterns into her arms and deposited them, helter-skelter, upon her sister's head, laughing gayly at the picture of solemn-faced Eileen with the little square books scattered all around and upon her.

"Now, Miss Sphinx," she said, "do you think you could come down from the clouds for five minutes and discuss anything so distressingly earthy as clothes?"

Eileen's face broke into a very sweet smile. She had not in the least intended to be indifferent, but long before Paddy commenced consulting her she had been in the middle of composing a lovely poem about mountains and streams and birds and things, and she had not really heard any of her remarks at all.

"What's the matter, Paddy?" she asked, eyeing the scattered patterns with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Matter!" cried Paddy, "everything's the matter! How on earth am I to select a blouse that will go with a blue dress, a green dress, a grey dress, a hat with pansies in, and a scarlet tam-o'-shanter! I've been worrying with those stupid patterns for days, and instead of getting any nearer a decision, I keep on thinking of something fresh that nothing seems to go with. Now it's your turn to worry; you ought to, you know, because Charity begins at home."

"Why not have something in cream?" suggested Eileen; "it saves a lot of bother."

"Yes, and what do I look like in cream, with my sallow skin? It's all very well for you with your ivory and roses, you look well in anything.

I don't think it was at all fair for you to have everything nice while I am burdened for life with a sallow skin and a snub nose. Cream flannel would be nearly as bad as brown holland for me, and when I wear brown holland you can't tell where the dress ends and I begin," and the corners of Paddy's mischievous mouth were momentarily drawn down in great disgust.

"You could wear bright-coloured ties," suggested Eileen, "and have one of every colour you wanted."

"Why so I could," brightening up, "and provided I don't always lose the colour I want at the moment of requiring it, it will save a lot of bother."

"But you always will, you know," said a gay masculine voice; "you'll keep every one waiting five minutes longer than usual hunting for the required colour, and then turn up in a red tie with a green hat," and before either of them could speak, Jack O'Hara, from the Parsonage, was coming through the window, head first, trailing his long legs after him.

"I've just had a little practice at this sort of thing," he ran on. "I came from Newry, with the Burtons, a whole carriage full of them, and we had a great time. The train was just going to start when I arrived, and the station master had locked their compartment, and when I asked him to let me in, he tried to put me into a smoker next door. I said, 'No, thanks, not for Jack this journey.' He murmured something about the Burton's carriage being full up, and I couldn't go in it, so I said, 'You see if I can't,' and took a header through the window, right on to their laps."

"But you don't know them!" exclaimed Paddy, whose face at the same time expressed the greatest relish at the episode.

"I've been introduced," was the calm reply. "Fletcher introduced me in Hill Street a week ago."

"Whatever did they think of you?" asked Eileen, unable to resist smiling.

"Oh, we had a ripping time. They're awfully jolly girls, and they had that little imp Basil with them. He amused himself trying to throw everything he could get at out of the window as we went along. But touching this blouse," with a sudden change of voice, "why don't you ask my advice? You haven't either of you a grain of taste compared to mine."

"Yours!" exclaimed Paddy scornfully, "and there you sit with emerald green in your stockings, a yellow waistcoat, and a terra cotta tie."

"What's the matter with my stockings?" surveying his fine pair of legs with an air of pride. "That's the O'Hara tartan; I'm very proud of it.

You're not supposed to look at me all at once. You should enjoy the stockings first, and then gradually work up to the waistcoat, and afterward to the tie."

"Get thoroughly seasoned and strengthened before reaching the face, I suppose you mean!" said Paddy, for which a well-aimed cushion brought her rippling red-brown hair half-way down her back.

Not that Jack had any occasion to feel insulted, because after twenty-four years' acquaintance with a looking gla.s.s, it was hardly likely he could be totally oblivious to the fact that Nature had been almost prodigal to him in her good gifts. One might go far to find a more sunny pair of blue eyes, a brighter smile, or a more handsome specimen of manhood generally. And to this was added a rare fineness of disposition, so full of sincerity and sweetness, that there was no room for anything small at all, not even the personal vanity that one would have felt obliged to forgive him. But, then, as a matter of fact, every one forgave Jack anything, and there was scarcely a house within a radius of twelve miles where he did not come in and out just as he pleased, finding an unfailing welcome when he entered, and leaving the same regret when he left. Yet he did things that would not have been suffered, by one in a thousand, in anyone else. He shot over every one's moors and covers uninvited, he fished every one's stream, he sailed every one's yacht, and rode most people's horses. He was, in fact, an arrant poacher, and yet neither gamekeeper nor owner could withstand his witty sallies, nor the laughter in his blue eyes when he was caught, and the young sinner himself used to say that though he was a poor clergyman's son with scarcely a penny to his name, he had some of the finest shooting and fishing in Ireland, and lived a life a prince might envy. Of course he ought to have been worrying about his future, and what would eventually become of him, but he was far too thoroughly Irish to do anything so foolish. "What's the use of worrying yet!" he would say. "Can't a fellow have a good time in peace, while he has the chance! I'll start worrying presently--if I don't forget"; then he would probably give his last sixpence to a beggar, and immediately afterward go into a shop to buy something for Aunt Jane that he thought would please her; and when he discovered, with surprise, that he was unable to pay for it, he would get the shopkeeper to put it down to his father and promise to call in another day with the money. But that would generally be the very last he would remember of it, and two or three months later the Rev Patrick O'Hara would wonder when and why he had bought that copy of "The Eternal City," or that work-basket with red lining. It was no use asking Jack, because he had always forgotten; and though he would immediately empty his pockets into his father's lap, so to speak, there was never enough in them to make it worth while. It was quite the exception for Jack ever to remember anything. If he rowed across to Warrenpoint to buy the sausages for Sunday's breakfast, he would be quite as likely as not to return without them; and if he took a note, it was a hundred to one it came back in his pocket unopened, and remained there several days.

"Now I wonder what I came across for, Pat!" was a usual remark to the old boatman, when on the point of rowing himself back again.

"Faith! Ye've a head like a sieve, Mr Jack," Pat would reply. "Was it they sausages agen? or maybe something at the grocers? or some shoe laces for 'is riverence?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, Pat, but I'll just have to go and ask what I've forgotten. Begorra! if I'd no head at all to put these things into, they couldn't slip out again, could they! and then I shouldn't vex Aunt Jane's soul with my forgetfulness. If it was sausages, Pat, I'll fire my gun three times off the landing-stage, and you must just go up to the butcher yourself and bring them across;" with which he would whistle a merry tune and row leisurely back across the Loch. But long before he reached the other side, he would again have forgotten, and instead of going at once to the Parsonage, he would stroll into the garden of The Ghan House, which adjoined, to see if Paddy were available for the afternoon, or if by chance Eileen wandered dreamily under the trees gazing at the mountains.

One of the great problems of Jack's existence at that time, indeed, the only one that he ever took seriously, was whether he liked Paddy or Eileen the best. Ever since he was two years old, the Adairs had lived in The Ghan House, next door to the Parsonage, and he always declared he had distinct recollections of a long white bolster-like apparition in a nurse's arms, from the first day it appeared in the garden. He could just get about sufficiently well alone, then, to be always in mischief, and at his first opportunity, when the two nurses were deeply engaged in conversation, he got hold of the long clothes and tugged with all his might and main, to pull the baby on to the ground, a feat which he very nearly achieved. That was Eileen, and just as she had looked at him with big, calm, thoughtful eyes, then, not in the least disturbed by his vigorous attempts to unseat her, so she looked at him now in the first bloom of her beauty, quelling his over-exuberance of spirit, calming his boyish audacity, and making him sometimes feel as if he wanted to lie down and let her walk over him. But then on the other hand Paddy was such good fun! When the second bolster-like apparition appeared, he was four, and being somewhat weary of the solemn two-year-old Eileen he took rapidly to the ugly little brown-faced baby, whose eyes already began to dance with a suggestion of the mischievous tendency which only developed steadily year by year and claimed them kindred spirits from their earliest infancy. What the nurses at The Ghan House and the Parsonage suffered over those two imps of wickedness would fill a whole book; and why they were not drowned over and over again, or killed falling from trees, or run over on the railway that skirted the grounds, or suffocated in mountain bogs, remains forever one of the mysteries of their existence. And things were much the same still, though the nurses were no more and they had reached the mature ages of twenty-four and twenty, respectively. Where Jack went Paddy went, or very usually followed; and there was scarcely an act of daring even their busy brains could conceive, that they two had not achieved together--much to General Adair's delight and Mrs Adair's disquiet, for she felt that if her scapegrace daughter were ever to grow up at all she really ought to begin at once; and yet was quite at a loss by what procedure the change should commence. Boarding school had been tried, but there the girl had drooped and pined to such an extent that when the General went one day to see her, he had been so shocked and upset that he had had her trunk packed at once, and taken her straight back to Ireland without telling her mother anything about it, until they walked into the hall of The Ghan House.

"I can't help it," was all he had said, in reply to maternal remonstrances. "She wasn't meant for boarding school life. I expect when the Lord made her, He fashioned her for running wild by the mountains and Loch, and well just have to let her grow up in her own way." And an hour later he laughed till he nearly made himself ill over the spectacle of a small boat upside down in the bay, with Paddy clinging to it, while a coal barge waited alongside to pick her up and presently landed her close by the General's landing-stage, a ma.s.s of mud and water and coal dust.

"Better not let your mother see you," he managed to gasp. "Faith! I've wanted a boy all my life, but there's no doubt I've got the very next best thing." Then he went off to the Parsonage to tell Miss Jane and Miss Mary O'Hara, while Paddy slipped in the back way and was smuggled up to the bathroom by a faithful old housekeeper who worshipped any flesh and blood related to the General, whom she had known ever since he joined the Dublin Fusiliers, and embarked on the career that made his old regiment as proud and as fond of him, as he, to his last gasp, was of them.

But to return to the vexed question of the blouse, the three young people, having settled the difficulty concerning each other's taste to their satisfaction, though in a somewhat unflattering fashion, Jack and Paddy sat on the table swinging their feet and discussed the delicate question of what would best suit the latter's complexion.

Then suddenly Jack looked up with an innocent expression. "What's the good of wasting all this time about a body's complexion when they haven't got one!" he said.

"How dare you! I've a beautiful olive tinge!"

"Olive!" teasingly; "why you look as if you'd washed your face with my brown boot polish! It must be rather awful to be so ugly that you look much the same in anything," he finished.

"Oh, you scoundrel!--you long-legged kangaroo!--you big-footed elephant!--you--you--" and failing words altogether to express her feelings, Paddy commenced belabouring him over the head with a small sofa bolster, calling out to Eileen to "be a man and come and help her."

"No, no," gasped Jack, struggling to protect himself, "remain a woman, Eileen, and be ready to bandage my wounds when this vixen has worn herself out. Who would have dreamt I was letting myself in for this!

Why I thought she knew she was ugly, it didn't seem possible she could help knowing it!--I--I--" but just then the door opened and in the midst of the racket Miss Jane and Miss Mary O'Hara stepped daintily into the room.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE MISSES O'HARA.

In all the neighbourhood of the Mourne Mountains there was probably neither priest, nor peasant, nor layman so generally known and respected as the Rev Patrick O'Hara's two maiden sisters. Miss Jane and Miss Mary they were known as generally, but among the young men and girls whom they loved, they were Aunt Jane and Aunt Mary always, and they were familiar figures at every gathering and every party for miles round! If anyone was in trouble, they went over to the Parsonage at Omeath as soon as they could; and if they could not manage this, it was practically a certainty that the two little ladies would very shortly look in upon them. The oldest inhabitants remembered them as two little girls, when their father was at the Parsonage before their brother; and later, as two very pretty, very charming young women, but why they were still at the Parsonage, and still the Misses O'Hara, was the one thing n.o.body did know. Certainly, they had been very much admired, and there had been some talk about Miss Mary and young Captain Quinn, of Omeath Park, but nothing had apparently come of it, for the Captain went away on active service, and came no more to Omeath. Several months after he left, both the sisters had gone abroad, and been away a year, but no one knew where they went to, and they never offered any enlightenment on the point.

When they came back, however, they were very changed in many ways.

Gaiety, which had been spontaneous before, seemed to have become an effort to both of them, and for some little time neither appeared to care to accept the invitations showered upon them as usual. Later on something of their old brightness came back, and they were once more the familiar figures everywhere that they had previously been. But though their joyousness came back, there was still an indefinable change and the suggestion of something hidden which none could solve, and to every one's surprise each "would-be" suitor was sent resolutely away.

Finally, it became evident that the Misses O'Hara meant to remain the Misses O'Hara to their dying day, and live at the Parsonage as long as it was possible--the dearest little pair of old maids that ever gave their fellow-creatures cause to bless the Guiding Hand, that gave some women to one home and one family, and reserved others to belong to every one about them.

"My dear," they said to any of the myriad nieces who plied them with wondering questions why they had never married, and whether it was that they did not believe in matrimonial happiness, "there is no happiness in the world quite like that of a happy wife and mother, but it is not given to everyone to know it, and many come to a crossway in life, where they know they must mould their future without any hope of it. But for such, the Good Father has another happiness waiting, if they will take it and trust Him, and not repine because they might not choose. It is the happiness of a life filled with serving, and rich in the love of one's fellow-creatures of every s.e.x and age and station. Our lives are filled to overflowing with, this happiness, and we are content to believe that what is lost to a woman in this life will be made up to her an hundredfold in some other life beyond."

"And then there is Jack!" one of them would add softly, and the other would reply with like softness, "Yes, sister, there is Jack."

By which one can easily gather, how, when the poor little baby at the Parsonage was left motherless at ten months old, he at once became the fortunate possessor of two new mothers, who would have gone through fire and water rather than let a hair of his sunny curls be hurt.

"We must not spoil him, sister," Jane, the elder, had said once, as they stood gazing rapturously at their new treasure.