Gheena was twenty. Five long years of dependence stretched before her—five years, during which the horses she loved would grow stout and shapeless upon grass, and she would fret and fume under the burden of authority. The two-seater which she had hoped for was out of the question now.
Mr. Freyne could be disagreeable. He could look over his wife's accounts and growl over Gheena's new clothes. He had not the greatness of any open aggression. To have fired off a big gun and borne the recoil would have been beyond him. He was one of the small bird shooters, peppering with No. 10, firing from behind hedges, nagging with a patient smile.
Sympathetic friends learnt, from reasons which a kind stepfather suppressed, how difficult Gheena was to get on with. She went to bed in a room where the grate would have gleamed with cold blacklead if she had not gone out and cut up branches and lighted a fire of wood and turf—the turf smuggled by Phil up the back stairs.
As the English held on grimly in their ditches of frozen mud, Mr. Freyne saw no reason to believe in the end of the war, so anticipated a poverty which he was never likely to see. He reproved Anne's limitless kitchen hospitality, the stout old cook sending away blind Barney ostentatiously, and then garnishing a humble piece of cod with several expensive things out of bottles.
Barney went no further than the harness-room, where a meal concealed in a stable bucket was carried to him.
"The war is above in the Masther's head," said Anne pleasantly. "An' I have all them trifles that he's so sot on emptied out over the cod, that he hates too, but me Darby loves thim."
"He has taken to ordering me about," said Gheena a little bleakly to Darby and Psyche—"to making things disagreeable for me. He wants to know my plans for the day, and tells me he wants Topsy himself so as to spare the car, and then he offers to drive me to see Lance. He wants me"—Gheena lifted a mutinous face—"to marry Lance. He hints at it with the subterfuge of a—a——"
"A charging bull," suggested Darby, "or a liner coming out of harbour." His eyes watched Gheena wistfully.
"If he is not careful," said Gheena, "I'll marry just to have the place. I'll marry——"
"Mr. Stafford, Miss," said old Naylour, opening the door.