Down the stairs flew Nell, out into the street, up to a banana barrow, a boy, and a puppy.
"Could you lend him to me for a while?"
The boy eyed her suspiciously. There was not much ground for suspicion, since it was hardly likely she could be contemplating theft; the puppy, though fascinating, was obviously incapable of proclaiming what breed he was intended by nature to represent. Moreover Nell, in a long pinafore and hatless, could scarcely run away with him. It was merely from force of habit that the boy eyed her suspiciously. The puppy was more discerning. He welcomed her as a long and ardently looked for friend; he turned ecstatic somersaults over her feet; then stood up, and tore at her pinafore with wild, soft little paws. She picked him up.
"May I have him? I want to paint him."
The owner of the bananas, for whom the boy and the puppy were waiting, reappeared. He was quite a gallant gentleman, and assured Nell he would be pleased to let her have the puppy for "a hour, miss," he said with a good deal of effect. "And in a hour I shall be back this way, and will fetch 'im if convenient."
Nell smuggled the puppy into the house and up to the Stronghold beneath her pinafore.
He started the hour by persisting in looking upon Kate Kearney as a butt, provided by Providence, for his especial benefit. He thought her a tremendously funny joke and the more K.K. aired her dignity, the funnier he thought her. He rolled over in uncontrollable mirth, kicking up impertinent little legs right beneath her nose; he turned somersaults over her staid body; he frisked up to her in ridiculous boxing attitudes; he slapped her face, and he jeeringly incited her over and over again to "come on."
But K.K. refused to "come on." She was furiously jealous of the unaristocratic little mongrel who had suddenly invaded her precincts. She took refuge in a hurt dignity; she turned her head away at his approach with an unmistakable suggestion. The puppy was not hurt; he had, together with his dirt and his plebeian origin, a useful thick-skinned philosophy.
K.K. retired to a corner, back to audience, and Nell tried to sketch the puppy. When held by Molly, he howled so pathetically that he procured his release, which was exactly what he meant to do. Thereupon he licked all available hands and waddled back to Kate Kearney. As interludes to his worrying of her, he tugged a great hole into the table-cloth and upset Nell's paint-water; he managed to get a pencil stuck into his mouth, and screamed with terror; he, perhaps, after all, and in spite of his plebeian philosophy, somewhat affected by K.K.'s suggestively averted nose, essayed a bath in her drinking-pan. He upset the pan, and his own feelings; dripping and whimpering at the shock of the water, he ran round the room, and chose a wet oil-painting of Nell's against which to dry himself. The result was bad for the painting, and for the puppy, too. Adorned with patches of green and blue, he waxed pathetic, sat down with a disconcerting suddenness, and put his head on one side.
Nell exclaimed, "I can't give him back like that!" and had resort to turpentine.
All the puppy's instincts arose and defied her. He wriggled and kicked and howled, and in the midst of it Sheila Pat appeared with Jim on her arm, and the information that Aunt Kezia had returned home. The puppy was released. The Atom put Jim down, and ran to him delightedly. But a change had come o'er the puppy. On the floor Jim O'Driscoll sat, lazily picking the shell from a nut. He took no notice of the puppy; his air of complete indifference was positively insulting. The puppy stood for a minute, petrified, then he pranced a little closer, and waited. Jim scratched his left ear and ruminated. The puppy barked. Jim scratched his right ear and ruminated further. The puppy made a nervous dash at him, and fled with his tail between his legs. Jim drew in the foot that the puppy had touched and went on shelling his nut. There was a pause, then the puppy approached within a yard of the blasé little figure on the floor and barked. They tried to stop him, but that puppy refused to be stopped; he had a good deal to say, and he meant to say it. That the object of the rude things he was saying gave not the slightest heed to him merely aggravated his eloquence to a louder pitch.
Molly thrust her head round the door. "Aunt Kezia is coming!"
Nell seized the puppy and poked him into the bottom shelf of the cupboard. Sheila Pat dropped Jim's cage behind the sofa, picked Jim up, poked him into it, tried to fasten the door, and Miss Kezia entered the room. There was a dead silence while she gazed about and took in every detail of disorder down to a dropped match.
"Ow—yow—yow—yo—o—ow!"
A long and distressful wail arose from the cupboard.
Now it happened that Kate Kearney had so far foregone her dignity as to approach the cupboard to dab at it with a triumphant and insulting paw.
"There it is again!" Miss Kezia was wrathful, but there was also an anxious glint in her eye. "What is the matter with the dog? Is it ill?"
Nell, fascinatedly watching the putting forth of a stealthy brown arm from beneath the sofa, in the direction of Sheila Pat's shoe buttons, responded with an irrepressible little laugh.
"I don't see anything to laugh at, Eileen! I am afraid you are very foolish and frivolous for your age."
"Ow—yow—yow—yo—o—o—oo—ow!"
The final "ow" was a veritable triumph of hideous nerve shattering. Miss Kezia's voice rose angrily: "I believe it is going mad! Or has distemper! I was foolish ever to allow it in my house! I hate dogs! It will have to be sent away if it's ill!"
The brown paw had reached and seized a shoe button. Sheila Pat was kicking frantically. The paw darted back.
"Oh, no—he—she isn't ill, Aunt Kezia—she's quite well—she's been mad—I mean, had distemper, already—oh, I—I think I'm rather m-muddley this morning—"
"I hope you're not hysterical, Eileen! You are really astonishingly foolish! As for the dog—"
K.K. had turned; her head was now facing Miss Kezia. Nell recognised the fact that the next howl could not, even by Miss Kezia, be put down to her. For a moment she thought of hustling her aunt from the room; but the detection of the puppy merely meant anger, punishment, a letter to Australia. They could face that, and Jim's arm had disappeared. They could not put up with his banishment.
There was a sudden and portentous silence in the cupboard.
Miss Kezia had a few more remarks to make. She made them. Once she deviated from the main theme of noise and general untidiness, lured by a rustle in the cupboard, on to mice. She declared that the kitchen was overrun by mice, and all because they had wantonly bought and let loose three in her house. She was going to buy new traps, as something had evidently gone wrong with the springs of hers. Twice she had found the cheese gone and the mouse, too!
Sheila Pat sat and gazed down thoughtfully at the forefinger of her right hand; a small smile flickered at the corners of her lips. The finger was rough and red. She wondered would it be possible to grease the lock of the kitchen door. It was not the pain she minded so much as the risk attached to the noise the slow turning of a stiff key makes at four or five o'clock in the morning. At the moment of her musing a determined little hand seized again on her shoe; fingers picked at a button. Sheila Pat kicked. Now, as a rule, Jim O'Driscoll was easily cowed—easily induced to retire. A frowning shake of the head had hitherto been sufficient to keep him still, in an attitude of petrified thought, for several minutes at a time. Apparently a backward kick, gentle because Sheila Pat could not, even for his own welfare bring herself to make it otherwise, had lost its power of petrification; anyhow Jim refused to abandon his tenacious hold upon her shoe button. Sheila Pat wriggled her foot out of the shoe; it disappeared immediately. Meanwhile Miss Kezia talked. She had never considered herself, or been considered by others, a talkative woman. When she left the Stronghold, there were worried lines about her face; she moved her lips in an irritated manner. It was irksome to her to be obliged to talk so much; it outraged Nature, and added to the irritation consequent on the O'Briens' misdemeanours. But she considered it her duty to talk, so she did it. And no one was grateful.
Sheila Pat rescued her button from Jim's cheek, and Nell opened the cupboard. The puppy certainly looked very charming. He lay in a nest of oats, biscuits, ink, and torn paper; a long paint-brush stuck rakishly out of the corner of his mouth. It was perhaps his expression that was so particularly charming. He had feasted on biscuits; he had tasted the flavours of oats, ink, and paper. He had had a meal to his taste, and now he was sleepy. He looked up at Nell a little mischievously and palpably with a supreme content with life. He was sleepy, and willing to be petted. That he was adorned still with patches of paint to which he had added smears of ink in no way detracted from his adorableness.
Nell said, "Oh, you bad puppy!"
She picked him up and hugged him.