In the same way Matilda took the latest advice from grooms and chauffeur. Still, it was better than Gheena, who took none at all, but listened with her grey-green eyes glinting, preserved complete silence, and did exactly as she thought best.
"Shut that window, Gheena—storms of rain and wind and a gale blowing in!" Bang went the sash.
"I've admitted some oxygen," said Gheena equably. "You'd better unwind yourself gently, Dearest; you got three strands round your ankles making that rush."
"And the fire roaring up the chimney with coals at their present price. Well, if it is turf and wood, there won't be wood always."
"Take one step backwards—now turn round," said Gheena. "Thank you. Don't break it; think of the soldiers in France."
The unbroken gloom of the day had irritated her. She looked at the grate and remembered—Gheena was too generous to recall it often—that it was her father's money which paid for everything, and that in a few years' time the house would be her own.
"And your insensate habit of sleeping in a gale," grumbled George Freyne, "smashed the Chippendale table at your window last night. I met Maria carrying it down with a leg gone. It is a valuable table."
"Was," suggested Gheena, her needles flashing. "Tom Malone put a deal leg on."
Her stepfather eyed her a little anxiously. The question of Gheena's future worried him. The thought of the Dower House in winter was almost intolerable. When Gheena married, Castle Freyne would belong to her absolutely, and if she chose an unpliable husband, it would certainly mean turning out. The war and its burdens curtailed the savings which Dearest George was amassing and—he had been out to the yard and found two new and unneeded men there, taken by Gheena because they had been dismissed, one by an economizer and one whose master had been killed in the war.
"Instead of economizing, you and your mother are always reckless," he burst out. "Two old men taken on, Dillon and O'Leary, useless old dodderers, eating in the kitchen, with tea and sugar and flour at their present prices. And oats—I have ordered nothing but black oats for the future, Gheena, for the horses, and I sent away a man who brought white."