A LITTLE IRISH GIRL

CHAPTER I

THE MISS CLARKSONS' EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT
FOR YOUNG LADIES

A goodly number of years ago there stood in one of the northern suburbs of London a large, old-fashioned red-brick house. In former days, somewhere about the middle of the last century, it had been a stately family mansion. A broad flight of stone steps led up to the hall-door, and in the iron railings on either side there still remained the extinguishers with which the linkboys had been wont to put their torches out, after escorting some fashionable lady home in her sedan-chair from a gay rout or assembly.

Within doors, too, the stone-flagged hall, the wide staircase, and the lofty rooms with their carved mantel-pieces and richly-decorated ceilings, bore witness to the ancient glories of Treherne House. Those glories, however, had long passed away. The original owners, the Trehernes, had sold it many years before, when fashionable people moved to other parts of London; and though the old house retained its high-sounding name, it had known many vicissitudes and changed hands many times since then. For some dozen years or so it had been owned by three middle-aged sisters, the Miss Clarksons, the principals of a large and flourishing school, or—to quote the inscription on the huge brass plate affixed to the hall-door—of an educational establishment for young ladies.

If anyone had chanced to stand in the entrance-hall of Treherne House upon a certain sunny spring morning, he could not have failed to perceive that this work of education was being carried on even more vigorously than usual. A busy hum of voices pervaded the whole house, and burst forth more loudly every now and again with the opening of a class-room door, while somewhere far aloft indefatigable fingers raced up and down the piano over sharps and flats in persevering efforts to master a difficult passage.

Both pupils and teachers, indeed, were working at full pressure, for the Easter holidays were barely three weeks off, and the examinations which marked the conclusion of each school-term were to begin the following week.

To Miss Euphemia, the youngest of the three Miss Clarksons, the care of the juniors of the school was specially confided. She was at present giving a geography lesson to her class, which numbered fourteen or fifteen girls of ages ranging from eleven to thirteen, in a large and dingy room on the ground-floor.

"Turkey in Asia lies between latitudes 30° and 41° North, longitudes 26° and 48° East," a flabby-looking, flaxen-haired girl was drawling out. "It is bounded on the north by the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus; upon the east by Persia, upon the south by the Persian Gulf and Arabia, and on the west by the Mediterranean."

"Very correctly answered indeed, Louisa, my dear. Constance Lane, which are the principal rivers of Turkey in Asia?"

"The Euphrates and Tigris, falling into the Persian Gulf; the Kizil Irmak, into the Black Sea; the Sihoon, Jihon, and Orontes, into the Mediterranean; and the Jordan into the Dead Sea."

"Quite right also. Norah O'Brien, name the chief towns in the order of their relative importance."

This time there was not the same ready response. Miss Euphemia rapped her desk sharply with her pencil and spoke again.

"Norah O'Brien, be good enough to attend to the lesson instead of staring out of the window! What have I just asked you?"

A well-meant nudge from a neighbour's elbow helped to bring the little girl addressed to herself with a sudden start. She was the youngest in the class, but sat nearly two-thirds up the row of girls; and her eyes, as Miss Euphemia had said, had wandered away from the dismal class-room, with its well-worn school furniture and walls hung with smoke-stained maps, out through the window opposite to her. There was not much to be seen there, only a wilderness of roofs and walls, with the spring sunshine lying bright and hot upon them, and three smutty sparrows chirping with might and main on the solitary plane-tree that grew in the back-garden, and which, notwithstanding London smoke and soot, was sending out fresh green buds all along its grimy branches.

"Chief towns," good-naturedly whispered a big girl who sat beside Norah, the one who had already given her that friendly midge. But Norah, whose thoughts had strayed away far beyond the back-garden and its sparrows, and who had only been brought back to stern reality by the rapping of Miss Euphemia's pencil and the sudden, sharp question fired off at her like a pistol-shot, was too confused and bewildered to profit by the kindly hint. The silence of the class made her aware that a reply of some sort was expected from her, and answering, not Miss Euphemia's question, but the train of thought in which she had herself been engaged, she stammered out:

"Tuesday fortnight, Miss Euphemia."

There was a general titter from all the girls. Tuesday fortnight was the day on which the school was to break up for the Easter holidays, so no one had any difficulty in guessing where Norah's thoughts had drifted to. A frown from Miss Euphemia and another tap of her pencil brought instant silence however.

"Norah O'Brien, go to the bottom of the class! You will not accompany the rest of the school upon their walk this afternoon. You will remain indoors and write out the geography lesson instead. If I have to call you to order again for inattention I shall be compelled to report you to Miss Clarkson."

There was no penalty more dreaded by all the girls in Treherne House than to be reported to Miss Clarkson, the severe and stately ruler of the educational establishment, and to be summoned to appear in her special sanctum for reprimand and admonition. It was with no little dismay, therefore, that Norah gathered up her books and moved down the class to the place assigned to her, seating herself below a little girl with pretty pink cheeks and long silky curls, who till then had occupied the lowest place with all apparent contentment.

Lily Allardyce was the next youngest girl in the school to Norah, and they were close friends and companions. She gave Norah's hand a little consolatory squeeze as she moved up to make room for her, and whispered:

"Never mind, Norah, it's ever so much nicer when we're together than when you're up near the top of the class. It's Fräulein's turn to go out with us to-day, and I'll coax her to let me buy something to bring home to you."

Lily was the little heiress of the school, and always more abundantly provided with pocket-money than anybody else. Her parents were wealthy people, who delighted in heaping presents of clothes, of books, of playthings, and of expensive trifles of every kind upon their only child. It was strange that she and Norah should have come to be such allies, for not only in their appearance, but in their tastes and dispositions, and in all other respects, they were as great a contrast as two children nearly of an age could possibly be.

Lily, as already said, was a soft, fair, pink and white little thing, always beautifully dressed in the daintiest of frocks. No one had ever seen Lily flushed, or tossed, or untidy. She was always well-behaved too; a quiet, plodding little maiden who was not brilliant in any way, but who learned her lessons steadily and never got into scrapes, except when she was led into them by her more venturesome companion.

One of her brothers had once teasingly, but not at all inaptly, described Norah as "short and dark, like a winter's day". She was so small as to look much less than her eleven years, and she had a thick shock of short black hair which resembled a pony's shaggy mane more than anything else. With her turned-up nose and rather wide mouth Norah would have been undeniably plain, if not absolutely ugly, if it had not been for her dark-blue eyes—Irish eyes, Norah loved to have them called. In general those eyes of Norah's were brimful of fun and mischief, but on this particular morning they looked as though tears were much nearer to them than laughter, for together with her Irish eyes Norah had inherited the quick Irish temperament with all its April-day changes of mood. Usually she was the ringleader in every frolic and in every piece of mischief that was set on foot, and at once the torment and the delight of her teachers. She was so bright and intelligent that when she gave her mind to her lessons she could master them in half the time that it took the rest of the class to plod through them, and girls considerably her seniors were wont to consult her about difficulties in their sums and exercises. Unhappily, however, there were very frequent occasions when Norah's mind was not given to her lessons, but was running on all sorts of other things, so that it was no uncommon experience to her to find herself, as at present, sent to the bottom of the class with a punishment in prospect. Not even the strictest of her governesses, however, could retain their displeasure against her very long, and as for the girls, they one and all adored little Norah. The elder ones petted and made much of her, and amongst the juniors, youngest of all though she was, she had constituted herself the leading spirit, the originator of freaks and schemes of daring which would never have occurred to any of them except herself.

"I'm Irish, you know, it all comes of that," Norah would say modestly when complimented on her fertility of invention.

There was nothing indeed of which she was so proud as of her Irish name and her Irish descent, although she herself had never set foot in Ireland in all her life. She did her best—not very successfully—to cultivate an Irish brogue, and no one could have displeased her more than by spelling her Christian name without the concluding h, which marked it as distinctively Irish. The shabby black frock which Norah wore, adorned by more than one unscientifically-cobbled rent, with cuffs and collar of frayed-out crape, betokened that she must be in mourning for someone near to her, not long dead; and there were times, as all her companions knew, when even in her wildest and merriest moods some chance word carelessly uttered would call up old memories and send Norah in floods of tears into some dark corner to sob her heart out in passionate grief and fruitless longings.

Poor Norah's troubles were weighing very heavily upon her on this first morning of our making her acquaintance. It was her first term at school, and as has been seen, the holidays were close at hand. Already the forty girls at Treherne House talked of little else but what each of them hoped and intended to do during those happy weeks; Norah alone, out of the whole forty, had no home to go to, no plans or projects to make. Lily Allardyce, however, had promised to ask leave to bring her down with her to her home in Hampshire, and Norah knew that Lily's parents were not the least likely to refuse her anything which she might ask.

On this very morning, however, Lily had had a letter from her mother, to tell her that she and her father were so pleased by Miss Clarkson's report of her conduct and progress during the term, that they had determined, as a reward for her diligence, to take her to Paris in the holidays, and to let her have her first glimpse of foreign life.

"You shall come to us in summer instead, Norah," Lily had said consolingly. "We shall have six weeks' holidays then instead of three, and there will be picnics and boating parties, and ever so much more fun than we'd have had now."

To poor Norah, however, the prospect of a longer and pleasanter visit several months off seemed but meagre compensation for three weeks of loneliness and desertion in the immediate future. Even the Miss Clarksons themselves were going to the sea-side for the holidays, and she would be left to inhabit the gaunt, empty rooms, with no other company than Fräulein Glock, the German governess. She had loyally done her best to conceal her disappointment and to enter into Lily's delight at the promised trip, but it was hardly to be wondered at if her eyes strayed wistfully out of the prison-like school-room to the sunshine outside, or if her thoughts wandered away from Turkey in Asia and its towns and rivers back to her old home on Hampstead Heath, and to the joyous, untroubled home life which had been interrupted so rudely by her father's death six months before.

It had been a very easy-going, harum-scarum household in which Norah had grown up, almost as Irish in its ways as if it had been situated amongst the old ancestral possessions of the O'Briens on the wild west coast of Ireland instead of in an eminently orderly and respectable suburb of London. Norah's father, Piers O'Brien, with his cheery, genial manner, his unfailing spirits, and the soft Irish accent which he had never lost, had been the life and soul of the little home on the green heights of Hampstead. He had been its mainstay and support too, for it was the brilliant, racy articles for newspapers and magazines, which flowed so freely from his pen, that furnished the means for providing for the wants of the household. But coming out from London one wet night in the previous autumn Piers O'Brien had caught a severe chill. A sudden and serious illness followed. There were a few days of agonized anxiety and distress, and then all was over, and the young O'Briens found themselves left, orphaned and well-nigh penniless, to face the world as best they could.

Their mother had died long before, quite beyond Norah's memory; but Norah had never felt the want of a mother's love, her elder sister Anstace, with her sweet womanly ways, had filled the vacant place so completely. Anstace was the second of the family; the eldest was Roderick, the tall brother of whom they were all so proud, who had just finished his college career with honours and distinction, and who was to have gone to the bar. He was twenty-one, and Anstace was two years younger, and after her there had been a stretch of seven years before the next brother, Manus, the special object of Norah's devotion, had made his appearance. Norah herself, the fourth and youngest, made the little family circle complete.

Roderick and Anstace were both very young to have such a heavy load of anxiety and responsibility thrust suddenly upon them. Careless and easy-going in money matters as in everything else, their father had not troubled himself about laying up any provision for the future, and when once the expenses of his illness and the funeral had been paid, there was but little left. The brother and sister, however, set themselves to bear their burden bravely. They decided with all promptitude that what little money remained, together with all that they could spare from their own scanty earnings, must be devoted to the two children and to their education, whilst they made shift to provide for themselves as best they could.

Anstace in former days had been a favourite pupil in the Miss Clarksons' educational establishment, and she had always kept up friendly relations with its principals. They now offered to take Norah into Treherne House on very much reduced terms, an offer which Roderick and Anstace most gratefully accepted. A cheap school, too, was, after some trouble, found for Manus in Kent. Roderick, relinquishing his hopes of the bar, accepted employment as a lawyer's clerk with as much apparent cheerfulness as if he had never looked forward to any other career, while Anstace became governess in the family of the doctor who had attended their father in his last illness, who had come to know their circumstances and was anxious to befriend them.

CHAPTER II

COUSIN ANSEY'S LEGACY

Norah did not let her mind wander again during the rest of the geography lesson. At its conclusion Miss Euphemia gave three taps of her pencil on her desk and said in her sharp, determined tones, "Dictation!"

In a moment, with the precision of an infantry battalion going through its drill, each girl had her exercise-book open before her and her pen dipped in the ink, ready to begin to write at the first word which should fall from Miss Euphemia's lips. Before that word had been spoken, however, the door opened and the neat parlour-maid appeared.

"If you please, m'm, Miss O'Brien is in the drawing-room, and she hopes you'll excuse her, but she wishes to see Miss Norah most particular if you'd kindly give her leave for a few minutes."

Miss Euphemia hesitated.

"Really, Norah, your conduct this morning has not been such as to entitle you to any indulgence—" she was beginning, when she caught the imploring glance fixed on her by Norah, who had sprung to her feet at the first words of the parlour-maid's message.

She paused involuntarily. There was something pathetic about the little figure in its well-worn mourning, and in the pleading blue eyes, and Miss Euphemia, strict disciplinarian though she was, had yet a kindly heart.

"As, however, your sister wishes so very specially to see you, I suppose you may be allowed to go to her. I hope you will show your gratitude by increased application to your studies afterwards," was the manner in which, after a moment's hesitation, she ended her speech.

It was doubtful if Norah heard the concluding words at all. She let her pen fall with a clatter from her fingers, dropped a jerky little curtsey, and gasping out "Thank you, Miss Euphemia, thank you so much!" she whisked out of the room and raced upstairs to the drawing-room, where Anstace stood awaiting her, a slight graceful figure in her simple black gown, with coils of shining hair wound round beneath her hat.

Norah crossed the room in one bound and flung her arms round her sister.

"Oh, Anstace, Anstace, darling!" with a hug between each word. "It's such an age since I've seen you, I began to think you weren't ever coming again."

"I couldn't get away last Sunday afternoon: two of the children were not well, and so I did not like to leave Mrs. Trafford alone," Anstace said, seating herself in an arm-chair and lifting her little sister on her knee, where she held her closely folded in her arms. "Why, Norah, you are as wild a little Irishwoman as ever; school has not tamed you in the least. And oh, my dear child," as her eye fell on the roughly-darned rents in the front of Norah's frock, "look at the state your dress is in. How could you have got it so torn?"

"I can't help it, Anstace, I can't indeed; it will hook on to things and tear. It's getting ever so much too short for me, too. See!" and Norah slipped off Anstace's knee and stood up before her with her feet in the first position, to show what a very little way the scanty black skirt reached below her knees.

"So it is indeed," Anstace said with a sigh, as she turned up the hem and examined it critically to see if any letting down was possible. "Norah dear, I do wish you would try to be more careful of your things; you know how difficult it is for Roderick and me to buy new ones for you."

"I do try my very best," Norah protested, with a threatened return of the tears that had been so near to her all morning, "but it's no use; I do think nails and spikes stick themselves out on purpose to catch me. There's Lily Allardyce, who might have a new frock every week if she liked, and her clothes never tear or have things spilt over them. Oh dear, wouldn't it be nice if we were rich like the Allardyces?—but I don't know either; they're only city people, and her father made his money selling chemicals or something of that sort, and we're the old, old O'Briens, no matter how poor we are.

"And one of the old, old O'Briens is a goose to talk such nonsense," said Anstace gravely; then, as her quick eyes took in the signs of recent trouble on the little girl's face, she asked solicitously, drawing her close to her side: "What is the matter, dearie? Have you been in difficulties over your lessons this morning?"

"Well, yes, but it wasn't that altogether," and Norah hid her face against Anstace's shoulder. "You know that Lily promised to ask leave for me to go home with her to Heron's Court for the holidays, but she's heard from her mother that they're all going to Paris for Easter; and I do feel horrid and mean, for of course it's splendid for Lily, and I ought to be glad that she's going to have such fun, but I can't. It's so miserable to think that I'll have to spend all these weeks here alone with Fräulein. And hearing all the others talk about going home, and all that they're going to do in the holidays, makes it worse." And the tears which had been kept back with such difficulty hitherto were coming in real earnest now.

Anstace stroked the little rough head that lay upon her shoulder tenderly.

"Do you remember, Norah," she said, "when I used to teach you at home, and you came to the heading in your copy-book, 'Never cross a bridge till you come to it', that you said it was the most ridiculous nonsense you had ever heard, for no one could possibly go over a bridge till they got there?"

"Yes," said Norah, dully, not understanding where this was going to lead to.

"Well, Norah, you have just been doing that very thing to-day in fretting about something that is not going to happen. You are not in the least likely to spend the holidays at Treherne House."

"Anstace! why, what do you mean?" Norah started upright and brushed the tumbled hair back behind her ears, whilst the tears still hung from her eyelashes. A strange light was shining in her sister's eyes.

"A very wonderful and unexpected thing has happened. We have come into a fortune, Norah."

Norah clapped her hands and whisked wildly round the room.

"Oh, I know, I know, Anstace! It's Uncle Nicholas! He's forgiven us and made up the feud, and we're all going over to live with him at Moyross Abbey, and Roderick's to be the heir. Is that it?"

"No, dear," Anstace returned a little sadly, "that is not it, nor is it at all likely to happen, as far as I know. It is only a little property which has been left to us—a very small one which I dare say a great many people would despise, but we are only too thankful for it. Did you ever hear Father speak of his old relation Anstace O'Brien, who was my godmother, and whom I was called after—Cousin Ansey he used to call her?"

Norah was doubtful, but thought she remembered having heard of such a personage.

"She died last week. Poor old woman, she had had a very sad life. Years ago, when she was quite young, she was engaged to be married, and her lover went out to America to make his fortune and then come home and marry her. Perhaps he died out there, or perhaps he forgot poor Cousin Ansey and married someone else, but at any rate no one ever heard of him again, and Cousin Ansey kept waiting and watching for him for years and years, till she had grown to be an old woman. She lived on in the place that had been her father's, and where her lover had known her, so that when he came home he might have no difficulty in finding her, but come there straight. Her mind gave way at last, and they had to take her away and shut her up in an asylum in Dublin, and she lived twelve years there. I only saw her once; she came to see us when I was quite a little girl, but she would only stay a day or two. 'I must go home, Piers,' I remember her saying to Father, 'I cannot tell what day Hugh might walk in', and so back she went. It was soon afterwards that she went out of her mind."

"And about the fortune; oh quick, quick, Anstace!" Norah cried eagerly, and then hung her head with some shamefacedness as she caught her sister's reproving look. "Oh yes, I know, Anstace, but you can't expect me to be sorry for someone just because she was my cousin, when I never even saw her, and she was mad before I was born. I think if she was shut up all those years she must have been rather glad to die."

"Perhaps she was, poor thing!" said Anstace, with feeling in her voice. "She certainly had not much to live for. However, Norah, she had always been very fond of our father, and so when her will was opened—it had been made long ago when she knew what she was doing—it was found that she had left everything she had to him and to his children, if Hugh Masters, the man she was to have married, should not have been heard of before her death."

"And he hasn't been; so of course we get it," said Norah promptly.

"Yes, dear. The little property is only worth about a hundred a year, but there is a small old-fashioned house upon it with a garden and a few fields belonging to it. It is called Kilshane, and is about two miles from Moyross Abbey. It was part of the O'Brien estate, and was sliced off to be a younger son's portion for Cousin Ansey's father."

"And we're all going to live there in that little old house, and be together again, and be done with school, and London, and everything that's horrid?" cried Norah, skipping gleefully about.

Anstace could not help laughing. "I hope so, Norah. Roderick came to have a long talk with me last night. He has been over at Moyross Abbey attending poor Cousin Ansey's funeral."

"At Moyross Abbey? Oh, Anstace, why didn't you tell me sooner? Did he see Uncle Nicholas? And what is he like? And is he going to be friends?"

"My dear child, how could I possibly answer so many questions all at once? He only went to Moyross Abbey because all the O'Briens for generations have been buried there; the old abbey is close to the house. Don't you remember how Father used to describe it all to us? He himself is the only one not buried there." And Anstace's eyes filled with tears as she thought of the crowded cemetery where her father's last resting-place had been made. "Uncle Nicholas was at the funeral; he is an old gray-haired man, Roderick says. He evidently noticed Roderick and asked who he was, for he turned quite white when he was told, but he never spoke to him, or took any notice of him. Roderick felt it a good deal, I think; it was so sad for him to be actually at Father's old home and not to be asked even to come inside the door. If it had not been for Mr. Lynch, the old clergyman, who knew Father long ago, and who made Roderick come to the rectory with him, Roderick would have had to drive straight back to the railway station. As it was, he walked over with Mr. and Mrs. Lynch the next day to see Kilshane. He says the house stands almost on the edge of the cliffs, and looks out right over the Atlantic. It is small, and rather out of repair, but that cannot be wondered at, for no one has lived in it since poor Cousin Ansey was taken away. Still, it is quite habitable, and the furniture and everything remains in it just as it was in her time. Roderick thinks he could farm the land that belongs to it. And he wants to know if we would be satisfied to go over and live there with him."

"Satisfied? I should think so! How can he ask anything so silly, the dear old delightful donkey? Why, Anstace, it's almost too wonderful to believe;—we four all living together again in a lovely old house of our own; no more London streets, and school-rooms and lessons, and going out two and two—"

"Yes, Norah, but it is just about all that I want to speak to you," Anstace interposed gravely. "If we go over to live at Kilshane we shall not be at all well off. As I told you already, the little property is not worth much; and though Roderick thinks he could make a little by writing—he has had one or two articles accepted by magazines lately—I don't suppose it would bring him in a very large sum. We must try to keep Manus at school whatever happens, but we could not possibly pay for his schooling and yours too. We should be obliged to take you away from this—

"Oh, but I shouldn't mind that in the least," Norah hastened to assure her sister.

"I dare say not, dear, but Roderick and I would mind your growing up a wild little ignoramus very much indeed. However, I am quite willing to teach you if you will only try to be steady and attentive. Will you promise to do your best, Norah?"

"Oh yes, Anstace, I will, I will indeed! It's so glorious to think of, and then to have heard of it to-day just when I was so miserable!" And Norah once more spun madly about the room in a manner that argued none too well for the promised steadiness, till she came into violent contact with the grand piano, and subsided, panting, on to the sofa.

"I cannot tell you what a weight it has lifted off my mind, our coming in for this little property," Anstace went on, speaking more to herself than to her little sister. "I have been so anxious about Roderick of late; he has grown so pale and thin, poor fellow, and has had that nasty hacking cough ever since the winter. Dr. Trafford examined him two or three weeks ago, and told me afterwards that it was the close confinement and long hours of desk work which were telling upon him, and that though his lungs were not actually affected, there was an undoubted delicacy which might develop into something serious if it were not checked. But at the time it was impossible to see how he could give up his employment, and I have been so wretched and so worried about it! We shall find it hard work, I dare say, to make both ends meet over in Ireland, but that will be a trifle if Roderick gets well and strong again; and Dr. Trafford says that nothing could possibly be better for him than the outdoor life that he will lead there, on the very edge of the Atlantic."

"Of course there couldn't; it would be enough to make anyone ill to be shut up in an odious poky office all day," said Norah, with as much decision as if she were an authority on medical matters. She sat silent for a minute or two, and then asked suddenly, "Anstace, why does Uncle Nicholas hate us all so? What did Father or any of us ever do to him?"

Anstace hesitated before she answered. "It's a very old story, Norah, and Father never cared to talk much about it, so I only know it in a vague sort of way from things he once or twice said to me. Uncle Nicholas was only Father's half-brother, you know, and years older than he. They didn't see very much of each other either, for Uncle Nicholas lived at Moyross Abbey always, and Father came to London and took to writing when he was quite a young man. However, Uncle Nicholas became engaged to a girl whom he met when he was over in England once on some business. I don't believe she cared much about him.—she was quite young, and Uncle Nicholas must have been a man of forty or more at the time. It was more to please her father than for any other reason that she promised to marry Uncle Nicholas. Her father was very ill—dying, and he was anxious to see her provided for, and of course Uncle Nicholas was a rich man and a great match for her. So it was all settled, and the day for the wedding fixed, and Uncle Nicholas wrote to Father to come down and make his future sister-in-law's acquaintance, and be present at his marriage. I don't know how it all came about after that, Norah, but Father and she were thrown a good deal together, and they found out that they loved each other. It was all very wrong, no doubt, and not straightforward, but they stole away together and came up to London, and were married the very day before her wedding with Uncle Nicholas was to have been."

"Then that girl was our mother?" Norah cried, with her eyes open to their widest.

"Yes, dear; Marion Belthorpe her name was, and that was the way in which she and Father were married. It was a very unhappy business altogether, for the shock killed her father—he was in bad health, I told you,—and she never saw him again. Uncle Nicholas never got over the blow either; he had been really and truly fond of our mother, and he was a changed man from that time out, so everyone who knew him said. Father and Mother tried more than once to make it up with him, but he would take nothing to do with them. Perhaps it was hardly to be expected that he would."

"He must be a horrid, mean, unforgiving old thing!" Norah said indignantly. "And does he live at Moyross Abbey all by himself?"

"No; the children of a niece of his live there with him. She and her husband died out in India some years ago, and Uncle Nicholas brought the children home and adopted them. There are two of them, a boy and a girl; so Mr. Lynch told Roderick. I don't quite know how old they are, but I suppose that Harry Wyndham will be owner of Moyross Abbey some day."

Norah stared at her sister in angry amazement, as if she could hardly believe that she had heard aright.

"But he has no right to it—he's not an O'Brien, and Moyross Abbey has belonged to O'Briens for hundreds and hundreds of years! Harry Wyndham! why, he might as well be called Smith, or Robinson, or anything else," she burst out vehemently.

Anstace could not forbear smiling a little at her impetuosity, but she sighed too.

"It is hard upon Roderick that the old O'Brien estate should pass away from him, for however our father wronged Uncle Nicholas, Roderick had no share in it. But then, Norah, you must remember that the Wyndhams' mother was Uncle Nicholas' own niece, while our father was only his half-brother; so that though they are not O'Briens they are really nearer to him than we are. Besides, I am afraid that our father and Uncle Nicholas did not get on very well together, even before that last quarrel. Uncle Nicholas was always very prudent and careful himself, and he thought Father reckless and extravagant—it never was Father's way to be careful of money."

And Anstace gave another sigh.

"I'm sure Uncle Nicholas is an old curmudgeon," said Norah decisively.

"If he is, he has something to show for it; and if it had not been for him Moyross Abbey would most likely have passed away from the O'Briens long before this. The property was loaded with debt when it came to him, and the house was falling to ruin. Father has often told me so. Uncle Nicholas was quite a young man then, but he set himself steadily to redeem the estate, and worked hard and economized, and denied himself in every way till he had paid the mortgages off, bit by bit, and rebuilt the house. Then a vein of copper was discovered on the property, and he managed to raise money enough to begin mining, and was his own engineer and manager, and now that mine brings him in a very large income. I don't wonder that he looks upon Moyross Abbey as absolutely his own, and considers that he has a right to leave it to anyone he pleases."

"He has not, then! He has no right to leave one half-quarter of a yard of the O'Brien land to anyone except an O'Brien. Oh, Anstace, how can you sit there and talk of it all so quietly? One wouldn't think that you cared the very least bit."

The look of pain which crossed Anstace's face might have told a keener observer than Norah that her brother's exclusion from the old family inheritance, which should have been his by rights, was by no means a matter of indifference to her. She only said, however, in her wonted quiet way, as she rose to go:

"It seems to me, Norah, that it is wisest for us to make the best of things as they are, instead of fretting over what they are not, and to be thankful that at least one little bit of O'Brien land has come to us. You had better run back to your lessons now. I hope Miss Euphemia will not be annoyed at my having kept you so long. I must speak to Miss Clarkson and tell her of the change in our plans, and that you will be leaving at the end of the term."

The sisters parted at the foot of the first flight of stairs. A door upon the landing gave access to the eldest Miss Clarkson's sanctum, a small room where she transacted the general business of the school and had interviews with the parents of present or future pupils. No girl in Treherne House, even if not summoned into that room to receive reproof and admonition, ever approached it without some trepidation, and Norah, as she continued her way down to her class-room, felt a sort of wondering admiration at the smiling unconcern with which Anstace, having first tapped at the door and received permission to enter, disappeared within the dreaded precinct.

CHAPTER III

NORAH'S FREAK

Perhaps no little girl ever underwent punishment with so light a heart as Norah did that afternoon. She was quite cheerful as she watched the long train of girls file out two and two through the hall, Fräulein Glock and Miss Euphemia bringing up the rear, and when they were gone she shut herself up in the empty school-room, and whilst she got out pen and copy-paper she hummed gaily:

"St. Patrick was a gentleman
    And come of decent people,
He built a church in Dublin town
    And on it put a steeple".

Miss Euphemia might not have approved very highly of the song if she had heard it, but it is to be feared that Norah did not trouble herself very much about that.

She did not make very rapid progress with Turkey in Asia and its latitudes and longitudes. Her pen was laid aside very frequently, and Norah either sprang from her seat and capered round the room as if the spirit of gladness had got into her very feet, or else leaning back against the form she gave herself up to long and delicious daydreams. She pictured to herself the happy life which they would all lead in that little old house of which Anstace had spoken, and how she and Manus would wander by the sea-shore and climb the rocks and crags of that wild, western coast upon which her father's boyhood had been spent, and of which he had told them so many stories.

The click of a latch-key in the lock of the hall-door brought her back to sober reality again, and warned her that the walking party had returned. Worse and more dire disgrace would await her if her allotted task were not accomplished.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Norah's pen absolutely raced over the paper in her efforts to make up for lost time, whilst she could hear the girls laughing and chattering as they trooped upstairs to take off their outdoor things. The blotting-paper had just been passed over the last page of copy, and Norah with a huge sigh of relief had laid down her pen, when the door opened and Miss Euphemia sailed in. She had laid aside her bonnet and mantle and resumed the high white cap, which within doors lent severity and classic dignity to her features.

"Is the lesson written out, Norah?" she enquired.

"Yes, Miss Euphemia," Norah replied, handing over the written pages, though not without some anxiety that in the haste with which the last portion had been copied out, errors and omissions might have crept in. Miss Euphemia's scrutiny seemed to satisfy her, however, and she gave the paper back to Norah, saying only: "Very well, my dear, put everything away tidily before you go upstairs. I trust I shall not be again driven to such a painful necessity as keeping you indoors."

Norah reddened and fidgeted uncomfortably.

"I hope not, Miss Euphemia," she said awkwardly. In the overflowing spirits which she was in, it was not possible to her to speak in a tone of proper penitence, and perhaps Miss Euphemia had expected a greater appearance of contrition and was disappointed.

"If I had mentioned the matter to Miss Clarkson she would have been very gravely displeased," she began, as she moved towards the door, "and if you should show yourself so inattentive again, I shall feel obliged to do so; but I hope it will not occur again, Norah."

"I hope not, Miss Euphemia," once more responded Norah; and Miss Euphemia quitted the room, closing the door rather sharply behind her.

It was opened again a minute later, and this time it was Lily Allardyce who appeared, her pink cheeks pinker than ever, after her walk in the spring wind, holding something very closely clasped in both her hands.

"Poor Norah," she said, in her pretty, cooing way. "I took my things off ever so fast, and ran down before any of the others were ready. I kept thinking of you, shut up here by yourself and writing that horrid punishment lesson, all the time that we were out. See what I've got for you! A woman was selling a whole basketful of them in the street, and Miss Euphemia let me stop and buy one." And opening her hands, Lily disclosed a large pincushion shaped like a sunflower, with rays of yellow calico all round it, and the centre stuck, hedgehog fashion, with pins.

Norah rewarded her by a boisterous hug, more perhaps as an outlet to her feelings than from any special delight in the pin-cushion.

"Lily, Lily! I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world!" she cried. "I couldn't get a chance before of telling you why Anstace—that's my sister, you know—came to see me this morning."

"Anstace, yes," said Lily meditatively. "It's such a funny name, Norah. I never heard of anyone called that before."

"It's Irish; all our names are Irish," Norah answered, with a touch of pride in her voice; "there have always been Anstaces and Norahs among the O'Briens. And we're all going over to Ireland, Lily; going to live there for ever, and never come back to London any more. What do you think of that?"

Lily's eyes grew big with wonder and dismay.

"Going away for ever, and we're never to see each other again? And you're glad?" This last with much reproach and a sound as of gathering tears.

Norah bestowed another hug by way of comfort.

"I wish you could come and live in Ireland too, but you can't; and you're going to Paris, that's luck enough for you; though I wouldn't take fifty thousand Parises for Kilshane, that's what our own place that we are going to live in is called;" and Norah drew her small stature up to its tallest. "Come along now," as she flung geography-book and paper into her locker with a reckless air; "I shall only just have time to get ready for tea."

As the two children crossed the hall, hand in hand, Norah's attention was arrested by the large wooden tray, in which the cups and saucers for the school tea had been carried up from below stairs. It stood empty now on its trestles outside the dining-room door, and from within could be heard the clatter of china as the servants moved about, laying the table. Norah, in her present mood, was ready for any freak, no matter how daring.

"Lily," she exclaimed under her breath, "did you ever toboggan down the stairs upon a tea-tray?"

"Did I ever do what?" questioned Lily in perplexity.

"Toboggan down the stairs—slide down, you know. It's the most awful fun. Manus and I used to do it at home sometimes, but it was such a poky little staircase it wasn't much good. The stairs here would be splendid, and that tray would hold us both most beautifully."

"Oh, Norah, just think how angry the Miss Clarksons would be!" gasped Lily.

"They won't know anything about it. Everybody is upstairs in the dormitories, and it always takes the other girls half an hour to take their boots off and wash their hands. We'll just have one go, not down this flight, the one above. No one will see us there, and if Jane and Ellen miss the tray they won't know where it's gone, so they can't tell tales."

Grasping the heavy tray in both hands, Norah was already half-way up the stairs. Lily followed in much alarm, but too timid to resist Norah's stronger will. As Norah had said, the fine staircase in Treherne House, with its broad shallow steps and long flights of stairs, was eminently suited for a toboggan slide, though it was hardly likely that it had ever been put to that use before.

She set her burden down with a triumphant air at the top of the flight which led down from the drawing-room. "Get in quick, Lily, while I hold the tray to prevent it slipping down," she whispered imperatively.

"Oh, Norah, I couldn't," faltered poor Lily nervously. "Just think if Miss Clarkson happened to be in her sitting-room and heard us!" And Lily cast a terrified glance at the closed door on the landing below.

"You little goose! Did you ever know Miss Clarkson to be down here at this hour? The tea-bell will ring directly, and she'll come sailing from upstairs with her evening cap on and her handkerchief in her hand." And Norah lowered her eyelids in imitation of the air of serene self-importance with which the head of Treherne House was wont to lead the procession into the dining-room. Then, breaking into her brusque tone once more, "Now, Lily, pack yourself in, and sit tight."

"I couldn't, Norah, I couldn't indeed; I'd be too frightened," protested Lily more tremulously than before.

"Nonsense, you've no idea how jolly it is! I'll go in front, and then if we do get spilt you can't be hurt, you'll only fall on the top of me. Now then, are you in? Hold on by the bannisters till I get in too, and then catch me by the shoulders."

Lily obeyed trembling, her powers of resistance as usual not being proof against Norah's determination.

"Tally ho!" cried Norah joyously, as the improvised sledge flew downwards on its mad career.

At that very moment, however, the door upon the landing opened, and out came Miss Clarkson with evening cap and handkerchief, just as Norah had described her. She stopped, absolutely rigid with amazement, as she beheld the two youngest of her pupils seated in the tea-tray and shooting down the stairs. The sudden appearance of her school-mistress was too much for Lily, whose nerves were already overstrained by the headlong speed with which they were rushing through the air. She uttered a piercing shriek, and clutched desperately at the bannisters. The sledge, thus suddenly arrested on its downward course, slewed to one side and tilted over. Both its occupants rolled out, bumped down the remaining steps, and fell in a heap upon the landing, the big wooden tray tumbling over on the top of them.

The crash of their fall reverberated through the house, doors opened above stairs, exclamations and questioning voices were heard, and the whole school came trooping down to find out what had happened, while the servants left their work and ran up from below. Norah had fallen undermost, but she was on her feet again in a moment, her hands clenched, and her small white teeth set tight. Her head had come in violent contact with the floor of the landing, and a bump had already started out upon her forehead, which was swelling visibly and promised before long to display a variety of shades of blue and green. She was conscious besides of a bruised knee and sundry smaller injuries, but Norah was a heroic little soul, and she deemed it beneath her to cry merely for pain; so whilst poor Lily, after struggling out from under the tray, could only sit in a forlorn little heap and sob pitifully, Norah boldly faced Miss Clarkson, who had not yet recovered sufficiently from the shock she had received to utter a syllable.

"It was my fault, Miss Clarkson, it was indeed. I made Lily come with me, and she didn't want to. I knew it was naughty, but the tray was standing in the hall as we came out, and I couldn't help it. I haven't known what to do all day, I've been so glad since Anstace told me that we were all going over to live in Ireland. I've been very happy here," she added with sudden recollection, for Norah possessed a share of Irish politeness with all her other Irish qualities, "but it's school, you know, it's not home; and if you had thought that you weren't ever going to have a home of your own again, or at least not for years and years, and then heard all at once that you had got the dearest, most delightful old house in Ireland to live in—oh, Miss Clarkson, if you'd been me, and you had seen that tray standing in the hall, you'd have wanted to toboggan down-stairs too!"

The whole of the school had flocked down-stairs by this time. Miss Susan, the second Miss Clarkson, had been foremost to reach the scene of the disaster. She had picked poor disconsolate Lily up, and was examining into the extent of her injuries, whilst Miss Euphemia stood with the fallen tray in her hand, and the girls and the French and German teachers crowded upon each other on the stairs in their efforts to get a view of what was passing.

An absolute shiver went through the close-pressed ranks at Norah's audacious speech, which called up a vision of Miss Clarkson seated in the tea-tray and careering madly down-stairs with her cap ends streaming behind her. In awe-struck silence the whole throng waited for the thunder of Miss Clarkson's wrath to fall on the daring offender's head. There was a momentary pause, and then Miss Clarkson, as if prompted by some overmastering impulse, stooped and kissed, yes, actually—a thing which, in the memory of the oldest girl present, she had never been known to do before—she kissed the little upturned face that gazed so earnestly at her.

"I scarcely think that, my dear," she said in answer to Norah's venturesome suggestion, "but I was truly rejoiced to hear of your good fortune from Anstace this morning, even though it means that we shall lose you from amongst us very soon. Under such exceptional circumstances I can make a certain allowance for your feelings having carried you beyond yourself, especially considering what a little wild Irishwoman you are. Your behaviour was of course most reprehensible," she went on, straightening herself and resuming her wonted scholastic manner, as she remembered her audience and the effect that might be produced upon them by such unexampled lenity. "Nothing would induce me to pass over a repetition of it, but for this once, considering the circumstances as I have said, and that you and Lily have already suffered from the consequences of your very silly and unladylike freak, I will take no further notice of it. Jane, carry the tray back to the pantry at once. Euphemia, be good enough to take Lily upstairs and put some sticking plaster on her face. We will now proceed to the dining-room, girls. When Norah and Lily have made themselves tidy and fit to appear at table, they will join us there."

And Miss Clarkson swept down-stairs with her most stately air, the girls exchanging wondering glances and whispered comments as they followed, two and two, to take their places at the long table in the dining-room.

CHAPTER IV

WITHIN SOUND OF THE SEA

The remainder of the school term passed quickly over. To Norah's credit it must be recorded that she bore in mind what pleasure it would give Roderick and Anstace if she were proved to have made good progress during her stay at Treherne House, and notwithstanding the intoxication of delight that she was in, she worked away assiduously at her lessons during the time which still remained to her. Accordingly, when the examinations were over, she was found to have won a place very near the top of her class for herself.

The great day of the breaking up of the school arrived at length. The hall was filled with boxes, and cabs drove away from the door with luggage piled upon the roof and happy faces inside. From earliest morning Norah had been the busiest of the busy, helping to carry handbags, and rugs, and parcels of all kinds down-stairs, and receiving the affectionate farewells of the girls as they departed. It was quite wonderful how sorry they all seemed to say good-bye to her, and innumerable parting tokens in the shape of pencil-cases, purses, and such small articles were showered upon her. As for Lily Allardyce, whose parents arrived early in a brougham to carry their darling off to the station from which they were to start for Paris, her joy at seeing them again was quite swallowed up by her grief at parting from Norah. Her eyes were swelled almost past recognition, and her little frame was shaken by sobs when she was at last induced, most unwillingly, to quit her hold of Norah, and to follow her parents to the carriage which waited for them.

Norah was after all to remain at Treherne House and to share Fräulein Glock's solitude for a week, as Roderick and Anstace had been unable to complete their preparations for leaving London any sooner. This appeared a very trifling hardship to her now, however, and in the evening, when she had seen the three Miss Clarksons, who had been the last to leave, drive away in their turn, she settled herself down quite cheerfully by the fire in the empty school-room to keep Fräulein company till bed-time.

Fräulein Glock, for her part, seemed amply contented whilst she had her days to herself and was not required to give her usual dreary round of lessons in German grammar and translation. She was engaged upon a crochet antimacassar of most intricate design, which required an incessant counting of stitches. She had, besides, a friend, a German teacher like herself, who was also spending her holidays in solitude in another school a few streets away, and the two were wont to pass many hours together, exchanging low-voiced confidences with each other. They were very kind to the little girl, who had perforce to make a third in their party, and strove spasmodically to entertain and amuse her. Norah could not but feel, however, that she was more or less an encumbrance to them, and she generally preferred to steal away to a sunny window on the stairs, where she curled herself up on the wide window seat, and let her imagination run riot in happy visions of the future.

Norah had counted on her fingers the number of days that she would have to remain at Treherne House. Beginning with the little finger of her right hand, they reached as far as the forefinger of her left; and each morning when she woke she dug the finger representing the day just begun into her pillow, saying to herself, "We've got as far as you now". And each evening when she went to bed she made another dig with the same finger, saying triumphantly, "There, you're over". Thus the days went by till the forefinger of her left hand was ticked off like the rest; and in the evening Roderick, her tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed brother, arrived to carry her off to Euston station, where Anstace was to meet them. And so the doors of Treherne House closed behind little Norah for good and all.

She was so wild with glee and in such boisterous spirits that Anstace had some difficulty in keeping her within the bounds of due decorum during the quarter of an hour that they had to wait for the departure of their train. More than once indeed Anstace had occasion to remind her of the ancient nursery adage, that "too much laughing ends in crying". The saying was to prove true enough, for a few hours later poor Norah, tossed to and fro in her berth, and enduring all the agonies of sea-sickness, was in truth a vast deal nearer to tears than to laughter, and both she and Anstace presented a very limp and woebegone appearance when they landed next morning in a drizzling rain upon the wharf in Dublin.

Their surroundings were not calculated to raise their spirits. A raw wind blew cheerlessly in their faces, and the tall dark buildings that lined the quays, the forest of masts on either hand, and the air, all seemed dripping with moisture. Roderick alone maintained a cheerful demeanour; the rough crossing appeared to have had rather an exhilarating effect upon him. He had been on deck since daylight, pacing up and down with his cap drawn over his eyes and the skirts of his ulster flapping about his legs, quite regardless how the steamer lurched and rolled under him, whilst he watched the Irish coast coming gradually into view. He exerted himself to the utmost for his sisters' comfort, and carried them off to an hotel, where, however, neither Anstace nor Norah was able to taste the breakfast set before them. Then came long hours of railway travelling, diversified by wearisome delays at junction stations, and at last, in the dusk, they alighted at Ballyfin, the terminus of the railway, and its nearest approach to the wild coast region where their future home was situated.

The drizzle of the morning had developed by this time into a heavy and continuous downpour, and poor Norah, cold, hungry, and tired out, felt more wretched than she had ever done in all her life before, and in her secret soul, I believe, would have been rejoiced could she have found herself back in the deserted school-room of Treherne House, where Fräulein Glock counted her interminable crochet patterns. At any other time she would have been in transports of delight at the novel sights and sounds which greeted her on every side—at the strange, guttural utterances of a group of frieze-coated men and blue-cloaked women, who, regardless of the rain, were talking volubly in Irish; at the scent of peat-smoke, which hung in the air; above all, at the outside-car which, on issuing from the station, they found waiting to carry them the twelve Irish miles which had still to be traversed. Now, however, Norah could only rouse herself to a very faint interest in all these things, and in silence she allowed Roderick to lift her on to the seat beside Anstace.

The little town of Ballyfin, with its market-place and its one long, straggling street, was soon left behind, and they emerged upon a level tract of dreary bog-land, the monotony of which was only broken here and there by a squalid cabin streaked green with damp, or by a few fields fenced in from the road and from each other by walls of loosely-piled gray stones. The leaden sky hung low above their heads, and the mountains were wrapped in mist down to their very base. It was impossible to hold up an umbrella, so fierce and wild were the gusts that swept across the bog. Anstace and Norah sat close to each other, a shawl drawn over their heads and held together in front, while Roderick, on the other side of the car, with the collar of his ulster turned up about his ears and a travelling-rug wrapped round his knees, shielded himself from the weather as best he could. On and on the car sped through the seemingly interminable waste, till at last Norah, who had hardly spoken since they had started on their drive, said, with something that sounded suspiciously like a sob:

"Anstace, I didn't think Ireland was one bit like this. I thought it was the nicest place to live in in the whole world; and ugh! it is so ugly and so miserable."

"You could not expect any place to look well on such a night as this, dear. If it were a beautiful sunny evening it would all have seemed quite different to us," Anstace returned as cheerfully as she could, though her own heart sank within her as she looked out from under the fringe of the shawl at the sodden, treeless plain stretching away till it was lost in the fast-gathering twilight, and wondered if it was indeed in this desolate region that their future home was to be made.

Nine miles were laid behind them thus, and it had become wholly dark, when the car made a sudden bend, branching off apparently upon a cross-road, and a sound which hitherto had mingled indistinctly with the wind and rain—a hoarse, deep murmur, now falling, now swelling out louder—seemed of a sudden to fill all the air. Even Norah roused herself to ask what it was.

"You'll never have that noise out of your ears, little one, while you live here," Roderick answered good-naturedly from the other side of the car. "That's the Atlantic, Norah, two hundred feet below us, singing a song to itself. If it were daylight you would see that the road comes out here just above the cliffs. Another mile will bring us home now."

"Troth, an' if 'twasn't that the wind is off ov the shore, it's not sing-songin' that fashion the say wud be, 'twud be thundher and fury wid it, and dashin' agin the racks as if 'twud swape the whole mortial airth away," the driver struck in. "Whin yer honours has been a winter at Kilshane ye'll have no need to be axin' what sort the roar of th' Atlantic is."

A few minutes more, as Roderick had said, and they turned in at a gate left open in evident anticipation of their coming. With a "Hurroo! stir yerself now!" and a cracking of his whip, the driver urged his steed on to its utmost pace, and they tore up the avenue at such a frantic gallop that Norah, desirous though she was to prove herself a true Irishwoman, and therefore able to sit upon an outside-car as to the manner born, could not refrain from clutching the iron rail beside her with all her might. The trees and shrubs on either hand flitted past like shapeless black phantoms. One long straggling branch which stretched itself out into the roadway struck Anstace and Norah a sudden stinging blow in their faces, sending a shower of cold spray over them from its rain-laden leaves. Before they had recovered themselves and had had time to dash the water out of their eyes, the car rounded a corner and pulled up with a jerk before the house, of which only a vague outline could be distinguished in the darkness.

At the same instant the hall-door was flung wide open, letting a flood of light stream out into the night, and two black figures came hurrying out. One held a sod of blazing turf aloft in a pair of tongs, to light the travellers, and waved it in wild whirls of welcome, regardless how the primitive torch hissed and sputtered as the rain-drops fell on it, while the other, springing forward with an uncouth yell, caught Norah in his arms and bore her in triumph into the hall, exclaiming as he set her down:

"Begorra, an' it's meself that'll carry one of the O'Briens in over the thrashel of their own dure. 'Tis the great day that sees the ould shtock back in Kilshane, an' God an' His saints give them luck an' prosperity, an' blessin's airly an' late—"

"Arrah, whisht wid ye, Tom," commanded the torch-bearer, whom Norah now perceived to be an elderly woman clad in the rough red skirt and cotton bodice common to the country, with a wisp of gray hair coiled up closely at the back of her head; "there's no ind to ye, so there isn't, an' it's frightenin' the little darlint ye'll be wid yer goin's on."

"Not a bit of him, Biddy; only delighting her heart with such a right Irish welcome," said Roderick, as he came into the hall and shook Biddy and Tom heartily by the hand. "And here's a new Miss Anstace for you," he added, drawing forward his sister, who had been so encumbered with wraps and mufflings, and so stiff with cold and the long drive, that she had found some difficulty in descending from the car.

"An' wudn't I have known it widout the tellin'," declared Biddy, as she caught the hand which Anstace held out to her and kissed it fervently. "Sure 'tis the very moral of ould Miss Ansey she is, the darlin' jool. An' who wud she take after, if twasn't her own godmother that she's called for?"

"I'm glad Miss Anstace was so alive to her duties as to have a proper resemblance to her namesake," said Roderick merrily. "And now, Biddy, I hope you're prepared to give us something to eat, for I'm pretty ready for it after travelling all the way from London, and I've no doubt the others are too."

"Yis sure, Masther Roderick, an' I've a fire in the parlour anyway that'll do yer heart good to see. If yer honours'll warm yerselves a weeny minute I'll have the tay wet an' all ready. Musha, go long wid ye, Tom, an' help to carry the luggidge upstairs, i'stead o' stannin' there, not able to take yer eyes out of Miss Norah!"

And with this last authoritative utterance Biddy flung the parlour door open, revealing a cozy interior, heavy curtains closely drawn, a snowy-covered table laid for supper, and at the end of the room the blazing turf fire of which she had spoken. Biddy herself disappeared down the passage leading to the kitchen, where a vigorous hissing and spluttering was presently heard, betokening that preparations for the meal were being pushed forward with all possible speed.

Norah retained but a very confused recollection of the after-events of that evening. The warmth of the parlour made her drowsy; there was a buzzing in her head as if she were still in the train, and at times the floor seemed to heave and stagger under her feet as the steamer had done. She roused herself in some degree when Biddy reappeared with tea and a smoking dish of eggs and bacon, but even during supper her head was nodding forward, and it was with difficulty that she kept her eyes from closing. She was only too glad, as soon as the meal was over, to let Anstace lead her upstairs and help her to undress. And almost before she had stretched her weary little limbs out in the huge four-post bedstead, with faded chintz curtains, which filled half the room, she had sunk into the oblivion of a deep and dreamless sleep.