Miss Kezia entered the dining room.
Molly, hastily and with a very red face, slipped the sheet of paper on which she had been writing beneath the blotting paper. She looked up, and the giggle that had started to her lips died away.
"Oh! Oh, can I do anything for you, Aunt Kezia?" She jumped up and kicked over her chair.
Miss Kezia replied stiffly that she required nothing from her. She looked at her thoughtfully.
"I suppose it was you who put my everyday bonnet into the wrong box?" she queried.
"I—oh, was it the wrong box? I—I'm very sorry—"
"And it was you who sewed a black button on my glove, while the others are white, I suppose?"
"I didn't think it would matter—"
"And may I ask where you have hidden my keys?"
"I—I haven't touched them!" Eagerly she seized on the small bit of relief. "I haven't seen them."
"You surprise me!" Miss Kezia said, with a strong inflexion of sarcasm in her tone. "Hadn't you better pick up that chair?"
Molly stooped and set it erect; she blinked back tears.
Miss Kezia said: "You are a very peculiar girl, Molly. I should be obliged if you would leave my things alone. You puzzle me, but I understand that you mean well."
Molly's downcast face lightened. Impulsively she burst out, "Oh, thank you, aunt—auntie!"
"I," said Miss Kezia, "object to pet names!"
She walked from the room, leaving a scarlet and abashed niece behind her.
She went into Herr Schmidt's room to see that Sarah had dusted it thoroughly. She found Sheila Pat sitting at the table, with paper, pens, and ink of Herr Schmidt's before her.
"What are you doing in here, Sheila?"
"Writin' a private letter," said Sheila Pat.
"Take it up into your room! You have no business in here at all."
"Has," said Sheila Pat, in very judicial tones, "has Herr Schmidt ever told you that you're like a little sunbeam in his room, and just as welcome?"
Miss Kezia seemed a little disconcerted.
"N-no," she said.
"Then you'd better go," the Atom observed. "He's said that to me."
She bent over her writing.
Miss Kezia came closer.
"Please," said Sheila Pat, "don't read what I'm writin'. It's very private."
"May I ask," said Miss Kezia, "if Herr Schmidt has also given you permission to use his writing materials and paper?"
"He hasn't given me permission," said Sheila Pat; "he asked me to do him the honour of placin' them at my disposal."
It sounded very grand. Miss Kezia left the room.
She went upstairs to the Stronghold to speak to Nell. Nell was seated at the table, writing. She started up guiltily as Miss Kezia entered the room.
"You all appear to be very busy writing this morning," Miss Kezia said crossly.
For some reason or other this seemed to amuse Nell considerably. She began to laugh.
"Oh, are they writing, too? I wonder—" She broke off, and went on laughing.
"Eileen, I am constantly obliged to chide you for your frivolity. You laugh at nothing; or, at least, I can see no cause for laughter?"
There was a pronounced query at the end of her sentence. Nell strove to answer it.
"Well, you see—you see—we're writing—private letters—at least, I am, and now you say—so I suppose they are, too—you see—oh, I c-c-can't help it, it's s-so f-f-funny!"
Miss Kezia gave the message she had come to deliver; she gave it in an austere voice, and with a face of disgust. The she went.
"Oh, I'm a w-worm!" Nell chuckled, crawling beneath the sofa to speak to James. "But, oh, Jimmy, I feel all mad these days! If—if it comes to nothing—but it won't! it won't! Oh, Jimmy!"
The next morning was bright and sunny, with a gladness in the air, a song of spring. It was the first of April, and even in London it was a glorious day.
"I won't even think the thought, 'What it would be like at Kilbrannan,'" Nell declared to Denis, when she met him on her way down to breakfast, "because—shan't we soon be there?" She broke out singing:—
"'There blooms a bonny flower, Up the heather glen; Tho' bright in sun, in shower 'Tis just as bright again. I never can pass by it, I never dar' go nigh it, My heart it won't be quiet, Up the heather glen. Sing O, the blooming heather! O, the heather glen! Where fairest fairies gather To lure in mortal men—'"
She broke off; she turned to him on the last stair, hung on to his arm.
"Denis, if only, only we might tell them! My hair fairly rises with the weight of the secret! I know Sheila Pat is wondering what has come to us!"
"Eileen, come in to breakfast!"
They went in. On the table there lay a great pile of letters. Molly and the Atom came hurrying in; Denis tossed letters to them all, and kept a few himself.
"I cannot understand why there are so many letters this morning," Miss Kezia observed. She looked round the table, surprised.
"Why do you not open them?" she asked.
"Anticipation is the soul of wit!" observed Denis, absurdly.
They fingered their letters, laughing, glancing at each other.
"Have you all gone mad?" Miss Kezia demanded.
"That's a good suggestion," Denis opined thoughtfully. "They do look somewhat abbreviated in the top story. As for me, I will open my letters at one minute past twelve, noon."
He airily tucked them away in an inner pocket.
"I request an explanation of these horribly addressed letters!" Miss Kezia cried.
The laughter broke out hilariously. Denis stretched out, picked up one of Sheila Pat's letters, and eyed it with pride.
"I thought that rather good," he observed. "Look at the curly little heads, and those tricky Greek e's!"
"Molly!" Miss Kezia turned to her with an air of finality, "Molly, will you vouchsafe me an explanation?"
Molly, at once proud and horrified, plunged forthwith:—
"Oh, yes, Aunt Kezia, you see, it's April the first, and you're a fool if you don't know it—"
She made an unfortunate pause, flustered by a burst of laughter.
Miss Kezia's cheek reddened a little.
"Molly, your language—"
"Oh, no! Oh, I didn't mean that! I mean that if you don't know it, you get caught, and if you do, you don't, and—and—you see—we wrote letters to each other—we didn't know the others were remembering the date, too, and of course if it had been our own handwriting we'd have known, you see. So we disguised them, and we can't open them before twelve or we'll be fools." She stopped, out of breath.
Miss Kezia said slowly:—
"Do you mean that you have wasted all those stamps, that paper, those envelopes, on a ridiculous childish game? That you have thrown away honest pennies on such tom-foolery?"
She proceeded to deliver a lecture on thrift which lasted throughout breakfast. Just before Denis started for the bank, a telegram came for Nell. Sarah brought it up to the Stronghold. She looked at Nell with scared pity in her face.
"It's for you, miss!"
Nell seized it, tore it open, burst out laughing.
"I'm caught! It's from Moira McCarthy! Oh, I wish I could catch her!"
She crumpled it up and threw it at Denis.
Sheila Pat picked it up and studied it.
"April 1," she read thoughtfully. She smoothed the paper out with a tender little hand, then folded it carefully, carried it to her room, and locked it in the box where she kept such treasures as she had brought to London with her. They were in the hall a little later, Denis had just gone, when there was another loud double knock at the door. Sarah came running, but Nell was before her. She opened the door; a telegraph boy stood on the step. She took the telegram from him. "For you this time, Sheila Pat!"
Sheila Pat took it. She looked at it.
"And 'er so little!" Sarah murmured from the background.
"Molly," said the Atom, "wouldn't you like to open it?"
"No, thank you!"
"I know it's from that Ted!" opined Nell. "Open it, Atom. The boy's waiting to know if there's an answer!"
From the dining room issued Miss Kezia.
"A telegram? And for you, Sheila? Why do you not open it?"
Sheila Pat hesitated. Longing to see if it were by any chance another telegram from Ireland, and determination not to let Ted Lancaster catch her, fought within her small bosom.
"Are you afraid?" Miss Kezia said, coming forward. "I will open it for you."
Now at the opening words of her sentence Sheila Pat's head had been uplifted with a disgusted jerk, but as Miss Kezia finished speaking, a sudden impish glow shone in her face, and gravely she held out the orange envelope. Miss Kezia took it. They watched breathlessly. She tore open the envelope, she read what was written on the form inside. A great and triumphant satisfaction illumined the Atom's small features as she watched the expression that overspread her aunt's countenance.
"It is, I suppose, intended to be witty," Miss Kezia observed at last. "I consider it a vulgar and sinfully wasteful joke. Sheila, did you know what the telegram contained?"
"I thought it was somethin' like that," the Atom said. "Please give it to me." She turned to Nell. "There can't be two April Fools over one thing, can there?"
The telegram was long; it was addressed in full to Miss Sheila Patricia Kathleen O'Brien, and it said: "Shure and isn't it afther being the 1st of April then, och begorra, and isn't it meself will be having the laugh of ye entoirely at all at all, for when ye rade this, won't ye be afther being taken in ochone acushla!"
"That telegram," said Miss Kezia, in awful tones, "cost four shillings and eightpence to send."
Nell eyed her admiringly.
"How quickly you can add up!" she said.
A little later Molly stole guiltily away up to her room. She locked the door, and sitting down on her bed began to tear open envelopes. Presently to her through the keyhole came a whisper:—
"Molly O'Brien, I hear the rending of note-paper!"
Molly jumped; her face grew scarlet.
"Oh, Nell! I!—I—"
Through the keyhole there was a ripple of triumphant laughter. Molly stood, red, and stammering futile excuses, and heard the laughter die away down the passage.