CHAPTER THIRTY.

AN ENCOUNTER.

In July Paddy had to go up for her examination, and for days she was in a fever of nervous anxiety about it.

"What's it matter!" Basil said. "Examinations never worry me."

"They wouldn't me if I didn't care whether I pa.s.sed or not."

"Well, why do you? It's silly, I think."

"Umph!" expressively. "If I were a man I'd sooner sweep a crossing than live on my mother."

Basil flushed and bit his lip. Things had been going so easily and pleasantly with him for years, that it was extremely trying to have these pointed remarks hurled at his head.

"The mater likes it," he grunted.

"Well, you see, she has your delicate health so much at heart,"

sarcastically. "I wonder she let you come out without an overcoat this morning. I do hope you won't take cold."

"Chuck it!" and he frowned gloomily. Presently he glanced up.

"Look here, Paddy!" he said. "If you get through your exam, I'm hanged if I don't buck up, and get through mine, too."

"You'd better begin working to-night," she answered, "for I mean to pa.s.s," and she shut her lips with a determination that spoke volumes.

And she did pa.s.s too--one of the three girls out of the whole number who had only worked for six months, and there was great rejoicing in the little jerry-built villa. Eileen went with her to the hall where the examination was held, and waited all the time she was there. Before Paddy appeared Basil joined her.

"It matters a good deal to me," he told Eileen, "because if she pa.s.ses I've got to start working to pa.s.s too."

When Paddy came her eyes shone so, there was no occasion to ask her anything.

"Oh, Eileen," she said, "do you think I might dance a jig right here!

Faith! and indaid!--I'm that plaized--!"

Basil was pleased too, though he would have thought it bad form to show it too much.

"Let's go and have a beano," he said. "We'll dine at the Trocadero and then go to Daly's."

"Oh, but I must rush home and tell mother."

"We can wire," and he succeeded in persuading them to go with him to the nearest telegraph office and dispatch telegrams to Mrs Adair and the aunties; and then they trooped away delightedly to the Trocadero. Paddy dearly loved dining out in this way, and all those sitting near them could not refrain from glancing again and again at the table from which such a genuinely happy laugh rang out. Even Eileen was gay that evening, and Basil surpa.s.sed himself with tales of the medical students and the comic side of hospital life.

When they at last got home they found Mrs Adair waiting with tears of gladness, for she knew how bitterly Paddy would have felt it had she failed. The following week they all went off to Seaforth for a month, neither Mrs Adair nor Eileen being well, and consequently the long journey to Omeath was p.r.o.nounced too trying, and the nearer English seaside place decided upon.

When they came back Paddy was duly installed as dispenser in her uncle's surgery; and her hours being nine to eleven and half-past five to eight, she was kept fairly busy. This was fortunate, as it left her little time to mope, as she would otherwise have done. For as the weeks sped by Paddy could not in any degree grow reconciled to London, and when they first returned from Seaforth it seemed more hideous to her than ever. She hated Shepherd's Bush with all her strength, and secretly much missed the daily journey to Chancery Lane, which had at least been interesting. To this free-born mountain-child the cramped streets, the dingy rows of ugly little houses, the whole atmosphere of this London suburb, were positively repulsive; and she felt as if she were in a cage, against which she was ever beating and bruising her wings in a vain longing to escape. It was much the same to Eileen and her mother, only they were made in a less vigorous mould, and it was not so hard for them to bear up, helped as they were by a religion which was very real and very true. Paddy's religion, it must be confessed, was chiefly her father. She stuck to her dispensing manfully because she had promised to be a good son, but deep in her heart she nursed a silent soreness against G.o.d that He had let things come to this pa.s.s. It was, perhaps, wrong of her, but no doubt that brave loyalty to her promise, covered much weakness in the eyes of Him who understandeth the secrets of every heart, their soreness as well as their patience. Also, when Eileen's defences did break down, she suffered even more for the time being.

Paddy could fling about and hurl out vigorous sarcasms, in which poor Shepherd's Bush got even more than its due of opprobrium, but which relieved her feelings a good deal, while Eileen could only fight it out silently alone. And whereas the mountains and loch represented so much fun and adventure to Paddy, they had been actual friends and companions to Eileen, and no one knew how terribly she missed them, nor what an utter loneliness there was in her heart. At these times she could not but turn gladly to Jack's occasional letters. They were not brilliant specimens of either penmanship or composition, but there was the true ring of the man himself about them, with his breeziness and humour and unmistakable sincerity. He made no direct allusion to anything that had pa.s.sed between them before he left, filling them chiefly with descriptions of the free, wild life on an Argentine cattle ranch, but there was something in the way he put things, and in the fact of each letter being addressed to her, that whispered a secret message to Eileen's heart. She was not ready for the message yet, but when she was very lonely it was a soothing thought and she let it linger in her mind gladly. Paddy, meanwhile, with true pertinacity, remained staunch to her old chum. What Jack had been to her he still remained, and seemed likely to do at present, to the detriment of any other would-be suitor.

Paddy felt she liked them all, but not any one more than another, except Jack O'Hara. Poor Ted Masterman only came in for an equal share with the rest, though she still continued to wear his coin, and he never ceased to think of her, night and day, in his far-off African home.

Then there were the two O'Connors, to say nothing of Cousin Basil. At first it had been the gallant Captain, who soon found himself in a ripe condition to be consoled for the loss of Owen Carew; but he had made no headway whatever, not even as much as with the gay society belle, and finally had to return to India needing consolation all over again. Then his brother Pat, the Middles.e.x lady-killer, took a turn, but with still less success, for Paddy would not even bother to amuse him, and pitilessly summed him up in the same breath with the meek young curate, who had meanwhile become hopelessly enamoured of Eileen's lovely face.

Basil, on the whole, she began to rather like, though she still taunted and teased him mercilessly; but if he got at all sentimental, as he very much wanted to do, he was shut up in such a very summary fashion that it was quite an exercise in courage ever to approach the dangerous ground at all.

With the doctor's patients she was a great favourite. Being a poor practice, those who could usually fetched their medicines themselves, and others sent children; and for one and all Paddy had a cheery greeting, or a merry jest, from behind her rows of neatly-wrapped bottles. To a police sergeant, who started airing all his grievances at things in general at great length, she once said: "What's the good of grumbling; it doesn't really help matters a bit. Do you know, if I stopped to think now, and then tried to express my feelings, I should just hurl all these bottles at your head, and anyone else's head who happened to come to the surgery."

The sergeant of police was so impressed that he went away quite thoughtfully, and the next time he fetched medicine he brought her half a score of new-laid eggs from his own fowl run.

"I was thinkin' about you findin' it dull work corkin' up them bottles,"

he said a little shamefacedly, "and them'll be as good as you got in the country, which you can't say of many eggs in London."

But it was one day the following spring, fifteen months after she had first come to London, that a chance meeting in Regent street brought about the beginning of a great change in Paddy's life. It was amazing how trim, and neat, and smart she had become now; London must certainly have been said to suit her, for she had rounded and filled out into a charming figure; and, while taking pains with her dress and appearance, she still walked with the old light, free step of her country days, her head thrown well back and her eyes clear and frank as of old. Without the least effort or wish on her part, wherever she went she was almost sure to be noticed, even when with Eileen, who, however, must always absorb the lion's share of pa.s.sing homage. Mrs Adair was, indeed, justly proud of her two girls' increasing charms; while far away, under the sunny South American sky, across endless reaches of rolling gra.s.s, raced Jack--the other part of the Irish trio--likewise developing into a fine, strong, deep-hearted specimen of his s.e.x, immeasurably the better for his hard work and various hard experiences in the matter of roughing it generally.

On that particular spring afternoon, however, it is with a thin-faced, clean-shaven man, and a very striking, dark-eyed girl, who pa.s.sed up Regent Street and went into Fuller's to tea, that we have now to do.

The man was mostly silent, as was his wont; but the girl was chattering gayly, now and then drawing a smile to his lips; and from the amount of nods she dispensed in different directions it was very evident she knew and was known very well. After they had commenced their tea, the girl bethought her of some special kind of cream bun she particularly wanted, and her companion must needs go and hunt for it. While he was gone she looked round casually, and was presently enjoying in no small degree a lively altercation between two girls seated near as to which should pay for their tea. There was not much question from the beginning as to which would win, for the girl who first caught and held the watcher's fancy was unmistakably a young person who usually got her own way by hook or crook, and in this case she informed her companion of her intention in quite as original and outspoken a way as she did most things. Finally, they departed, and the dark-eyed stranger was quite sorry to see them go.

When her attendant knight returned with the cream buns in question, his usually impa.s.sive face wore the faintest suspicion of surprise, but he only placed her delicacies before her and said: "There! now you can make yourself ill to your heart's content."

"You ought to have been here a minute ago," she said. "There was such an amusing discussion between two girls about which should pay. I was immensely taken with one of them--she wasn't exactly pretty, but she looked so jolly, and she just carried everything before her in a most entertaining fashion. She's just the sort of girl I'd fall in love with if I were a man. Did you notice her? She was paying at the desk while you hunted up these cakes."

"I did. It was Paddy Adair."

"Paddy Adair!" in tones of amazement. "Was that really Paddy Adair, Lawrence?"

"It was."

"Goodness!" and Gwen grew quite contemptuous. "Why you said she was plain and dowdy!"

Lawrence calmly continued his tea.

"So she was the last time I saw her."

"Well, she isn't now, anyway. I call her quite striking, and she was distinctly well dressed." There was a pause, then she added: "Perhaps she's married, and got a man to choose her things for her. That's one thing husbands are sometimes good for; and some of them know a fair amount about hair-dressing too."

"No, she's not married," said Lawrence. "Doreen was talking about them only the other day. They're living in Shepherd's Bush."

"Shepherd's Bush!" echoed Gwendoline. "How awful, after their country home. But how London has smartened her up, hasn't it?"

"Astonishingly."

"I wish you had come back in time to speak to her," continued Gwen.

"I'd like to be introduced."

Meanwhile, Paddy walked down to Piccadilly Circus with Ethel Matheson, and then hurried back to get her 'bus in Oxford Street. On the way she dashed into a shop and bought some tomatoes, a favourite dish of her mother's--true to her nationality, acting on the spur of the moment, blissfully regardless of the fact that she could have got the same article for half the money at the other end of her 'bus ride. As she hurried past Fuller's Lawrence and Gwendoline came out, the latter catching sight of her instantly.

"There's Paddy Adair!" she exclaimed. "Do stop her."

Lawrence hesitated and in that second Paddy brushed too near a boy with a basket, the basket caught against her bag of tomatoes--carried no doubt in somewhat careless fashion--the paper split, and out sprawled the tomatoes all across the pavement in the midst of the rank and fashion of Regent Street.

"Christopher Columbus!" exclaimed Paddy under her breath and blushing crimson, but quite unable to help laughing, as she commenced diving for her belongings among the feet of the pa.s.sers-by. A dark-eyed girl, enjoying the scrimmage immensely, rescued one from the gutter, while the man with her succeeded in getting three from various directions, and when Paddy at last turned to thank them, a lovely colour in her cheeks and a bewitching roguishness in her eyes, she found herself face to face with Lawrence Blake and his companion, each offering her a tomato.