"Oh, Royal dear, you are a darling!" cried Winnie. And Cousin Jane, passing through the hall to bed, overheard them, and remarked to Emma that she never would have believed children could be so heartless as to be laughing and playing with the dog, when that poor little girl might be lying dead through their wickedness.
CHAPTER XXI.
Murtagh slept late next morning, and was wakened by Winnie who wanted him to get up and come and inquire about Pat. Anxiety about Marion had made him completely forget Pat, but now that trouble returned upon him in full force. He got up and went with Winnie to see Mrs. O'Toole. But nothing had been heard of Pat, and between her longing to see the boy and dread least the police should find him, Mrs. O'Toole was in terrible grief. The children could give her no comfort, and they wandered sadly back to the house.
Frankie was in bed, but Cousin Jane came and told them they might go in and see him. He had set his heart upon seeing them, and she could not refuse when he was ill. She begged they would not put any of their hardened notions into his head, but they were too glad of being able to see Frankie to care for anything Cousin Jane said.
He welcomed them delightedly, eager to know what they had done yesterday.
There was something very touching in the almost worshipful admiration with which he regarded them. He thought them nearly perfect, and if he had ever had a dream for himself it would have been to be like Murtagh, and to do the things Murtagh did. Only he never dreamt anything for himself; perhaps, poor little fellow, it did not seem to him worth while. He would lie for hours upon the sofa, picturing to himself Murtagh walking up before assembled rows of schoolboys to receive impossible numbers of first prizes; Murtagh winning cricket-matches, or Murtagh leading troops to battle. There was no wonderful feat in history that Murtagh had not outdone many a time in Frankie's ambitious imagination.
Troubled as Murtagh and Winnie were at their share in this misfortune, it was very soothing to their sore consciences to talk with Frankie. His ideas of right and wrong used to become very confused where Winnie and Murtagh were concerned. All he thought about was how best to comfort them, and in the end he invariably succeeded in proving, to his own satisfaction at least, that they had been perfectly right.
They used to talk more of what they really thought with Frankie than they did even to one another; and they confided to him now, in their own odd scrappy fashion, the sore regrets by which they were assailed.
With all his goodwill, even Frankie was puzzled to reconcile their resolutions on the mountain with the scene in the barn-yard that so closely followed them. But then he said that Mr. Plunkett was so nasty nobody could help being rude to him; and, of course, they couldn't possibly know that one of the followers would set fire to his haystacks. The whole misfortune, he finally declared, was as much owing to Mr. Plunkett as to them. He would go out and be disagreeable when Nessa told him they were excited. It was all his own fault; and then he could not be contented without making false accusations, and trying to get Murtagh into trouble.