These came a morning when Miss Kezia breakfasted in angry state, alone. At eight o'clock she sat down, as usual, to the table. With down-drawn lip she filled the five cups with coffee, then started on her porridge. Every now and then her eye glanced at the four bowls of porridge with their rapidly lessening issue of steam. From overhead there came, at intervals, the banging of a door, the rush of footsteps from one room to another, a burst of laughter now and then. Miss Kezia went on with her breakfast. Once Sarah knocked timidly, and, with a scared face, dared the whispered suggestion that she should take the porridge "to keep it hot." Her courage failed before ever Miss Kezia's grim lips had begun to frame an answer, and she fled back to the refuge of the kitchen.
From above came Denis's voice, jubilant, a musical shout of joy.
"'Miss Judy O'Connor, she lived forninst me And tinder words to her I wrote—'
"I say, Nell, did I leave my towels in your room?"
Down came Miss Kezia's upper lip.
From above:—
"A stud is an animate article, possessing the human attributes of legs and devilment—got him, by Jove! Now thin ye young devil, is it hidin' from me, indeed! I'll be teachin' ye a lesson—"
"Denis, have you seen my hair-ribbon?"
"Oh," this was Nell's voice, "I wish I had a tail like a kitten, to run round and round after!"
Miss Kezia's expression grew painfully long-suffering.
"If you were havin' a tail in this London, there wouldn't be room to run round after it!" Scorn vibrated in this voice.
A pause.
Thud—thud—patter— Then, with a startling suddenness, a wild Irish whoop.
Miss Kezia jumped badly, and the angry, shamed colour flooded her cheeks. She rose—a quick succession of whoops sounded nearer and nearer—she went out into the hall. Denis was coming downstairs, two at a time, and performing an Irish jig at the same moment. The others were behind him.
"May I request that you cease making those horrible noises? I do not want the police here, thinking murder is being committed."
Unfortunately this struck their perverse minds as being intensely funny.
Miss Kezia went back to the dining room, and they followed her to cold coffee and congealed porridge. But coffee as cold as the ice round the North pole, and porridge as congealed as lead, were powerless, as Miss Kezia's disapproval was powerless, to quench the hilarity in the atmosphere that morning.
"May I inquire why you have chosen to be three-quarters of an hour late this morning?"
Heads were lifted from bowls of congealed porridge; laughter rippled round the table.
"'Twasn't we chose—it was the letters," Nell said, and her voice was almost a song, so gay was the lilt of it.
Denis said blandly, "Put the blame on the postman, and the cap will fit him like a glove."
Nell volunteered sweetly:—
"They're letters from Melbourne, Aunt Kezia! Mother is quite well and strong—quite brown and well and strong!"
"I am glad to hear it, but surely you could have read them after breakfast."
The gaiety was quenched momentarily by the sheer force of the surprise that invaded them. Silence reigned, while their thoughts worked rapidly over the waiting of the last months—the impatient suspense of the last days, as the time drew near the date on which they had calculated they could get their first Australian mail. Nell eyed Miss Kezia with a hint of soberness in her face.
Tucking Denis into his coat a little later, she said, "I pity her."
"Who? Our austere relative?"
She nodded; then tapped her brow and her left side suggestively.
"There must be something wanting somewhere."
"A good deal," laughed he, amused.
On the door-step he paused, turned, and made a comical grimace.
"Figures on a day like this! Don't start pitying me, too, or I'll never go!"
He was out of the gate.
At lunch time he observed to Nell:—
"Suppose I get the sack?"
"I could almost wish it, twin."
He laughed.
"Never did man be burdened with such a degenerate twin! Well, old Tellbridge wants to speak to me this afternoon! In the manager's room, Nell!"
"A rise!" she ejaculated.
"Or a fall! I was showing the chaps how to play handball. We'd cleared the room a bit. Tellbridge came in. Lord, he did swell! I thought it was a good thing we'd cleared the room. He asked a few questions—with bland edges to them—and he wants to see me at half-past two in his room."
"Oh, Denis, suppose—"
"A wrinkled brow to-day, Nell!" he laughed. "I refuse to suppose," he observed gaily. "Even in my very innermost recesses, I don't suppose. I'm horribly hungry. Let's see, there's no mutton from yesterday to be eaten up, is there?"
She flung her arms wide.
"My innermost recesses are not supposing now!"
When he came back that afternoon he brought Ted Lancaster, and both were laden with parcels.
"Celebration parcels, Nell!"
Ted said, "I say," and wrung her hand hard.
"Denis! Well?"
"What? Oh, my interview with old Pom-Pom. My dear, I made a plain statement of the facts of the case, and he actually smiled! Here endeth the—er—third interview!"
Molly came in and poked about amongst the parcels.
"I do wish Aunt Kezia were going out to-night."
Denis pretended to feel faint.
"You, Molly? You, the patent softener of a relative's hard heart?"
Molly blushed and glanced abashed at Ted's amused face.
"Well, for her own sake, anyway," she protested, and dropped her eyes with a giggle over her hypocrisy.
"Ted," Nell said, "here's a penny."
"Thanks awfully."
He took it and dropped it into his pocket.
"It may come in useful some day. One never knows."
"Well?" she said.
"Well what?"
"You don't think I'd give you a penny for nothing! It's for your thoughts."
He gave her a quick little glance.
"Oh, my thoughts! And I hoped it was pure disinterested benevolence!"
"Tell me your thoughts! I'm sure you were thinking of something nice for us—"
He interrupted flurriedly.
"Something nice? I—I— What made you think that? I wasn't! I really—"
"You looked sort of kind," she said, laughing.
"Well, I wasn't!"
"Give me back my penny!" He handed it back with an absent-minded air.
Protests were sent and brought up to the Stronghold that evening. An abashed and blushing Sarah brought them, and an austere and angry Miss Kezia sent them.
Sheila Pat marched downstairs, and knocked at Herr Schmidt's door.
"Kom in!"
Sheila Pat went in. Her eyes were very bright, her pig-tail was very crooked.
"Herr Schmidt," she said, "please will you walk out with Aunt Kezia?"
Herr Schmidt's big face grew redder than its usual red wont. It chanced that he understood the meaning of "walking out."
"Ach!" he ejaculated.
Sheila Pat eyed him severely.
"Sarah says if you're walking out with a young man you must always go when he asks you to," she explained. Her voice rose, "Oh, Herr Schmidt, you could always ask Aunt Kezia when we want to get rid of her, and," impishly she glowed, "she could never say no!"
"I'm sorry—" he began.
She urged strenuously. "She's very worthy! She gives all her old clothes to charity. And Sarah says she's very just, and she'd make your wages go a very long way. Sarah says that's a great thing."
He began to chuckle, but checked it in his distress at having to disappoint her. She came down at last to a humble, "Well, will you please just take her for a walk now?"
She returned, chastened and severe, to the Stronghold. A visit a few minutes later, from Miss Kezia herself, lent an added intensity to the small figure that flung itself desperately at Mr. Mark Yovil, who called to leave some book for Denis.
"Take her away! Walk out with her! She's a wet counterpane on us!"
Mark Yovil, known for his obstinacy, his firm will, was weak where this Atom was concerned.
"I'm going to a lecture," he declared hesitatingly.
"Take her!"
"But, my dear, it's nothing that would interest her. She would not come—"
"Oh, please! 'Magine us—up there—all quiet and still like dead mice! And our letter-day! It—it's really very sad!"
He looked down into her upturned face, into the wild entreaty of her great eyes.
Miss Kezia came into the hall and greeted him, surprised.
He turned to her, and asked her if she would be so very kind—his sister had lost her cook quite suddenly—not very experienced—advice—
Miss Kezia presently had gone upstairs to don her bonnet, her one weakness, love of giving advice, enveloping her in a cloud of complacency.
"Now, small Sheila Pat, am I not a true friend? But, mark this, I have told no falsehoods." He took her on his knee. "My sister has lost her cook. She is inexperienced. She does want advice," he twinkled there; "I don't know that it's the advice of your estimable aunt that she particularly requires, but we'll hope so. Your aunt once whacked my sister's baby on the back when it had swallowed a spoon or fork or knife or something of the kind. Perhaps it was the soup-tureen. Well, now, I shall have to leave your aunt in one room while I explain to my sister. You'll have to love me for ever for this, Sheila Pat."
A little later, and noise echoed with joyful abandon through the house.
When Ted bade them good night, he said hesitatingly:—
"I say, Nell—er—"
"Say on!" she encouraged him.
"You don't think—I mean—well, you won't get thinking—er—will you?"
"Oh, Ted, why? Have you noticed any grey hairs yet?" She put up her hands to her hair.
He smiled.
"I mean—you know—"
"By Jove, if she does know, they didn't divide the supply of brains between us equally," Denis observed.
"I only mean that I don't want you to—to get thinking that—you know you said before that I looked as if I were thinking of something nice for you—well, you won't think I was, will you?"
"Oh, indeed, I will now! Denis, can't you see there's a secret somewhere? Oh, how lovely! Ted, I do love secrets. Is it something very nice?"
He looked into her teasing face with an expression of almost ludicrous dismay.
"I—wish you wouldn't!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped laughing.
"Well, I won't!" she said. "I'm quite sure there's nothing nice going to happen anywhere or any time, and it'll be all the more a surprise, won't it? Oh, Ted, I didn't mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was all fun, all smoke—"
"'There's no smoke without a fire,'" Denis told the ceiling.
"Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined.
Ted still looked worried. His good nights were absent. When he had gone, Nell observed thoughtfully:—
"I wonder what it is! Oh, I hope we won't have to wait long!"