Yet to-night, lacking Peter, some of the old wistful regrets touched Merle with chilly fingers; followed her with ghostly trip into the little boudoir, grey and primrose, Lancret looped medallion-wise into the overmantel; whispered in lisping voices of a day that might possibly come when Dresden, with ribboned crook for sceptre, should again reign supreme in her life; pointed in light mockery to a picture that adorned the wall: Merle herself, aged eight, standing stiffly posed beside a sundial; hands busy with the ivory sticks of a painted fan; toes primly turned outwards; smooth, dark curls; high-waisted pink frock. One moment fixed indelibly to symbolize a whole childhood. And with whatever passionate zest she might play now, Merle knew, and hotly resented, that she could not make up for her cheated years of château and convent, of solitude and decorum and il-ne-faut-pas. To be sure, the latter phrase did not need to be said often; la petite Merle and her brother Fernand had been ever ‘bien sage lui; et elle, un vrai petit ange.’ Of course she had! Who had taught her otherwise, before her twentieth birthday?
... An April shower of rain swept the panes, glowing sapphire-dark behind their primrose hangings. A musical pattering shower, unreal as a lit boudoir and a girl’s dreams....
—Crash! and an exquisite china clock lay shattered on the ground. A thin little chap, with freckled impertinent nose and pointed ears, looked up, startled, as Merle hastened to the rescue: “Couldn’t help it; just wanted to see how it took to pieces.”...
With wild hurrahs, a tangle of long legs and flying skirts whizzed down the banisters and landed in a heap at the foot.
Something delightful and sturdy, with dark red hair and blown-out cheeks, was marching to and fro on the polished drawing-room floor, waving flags and shouting....
Thus Merle drew from the Land of Corners, shadowy corners of the old house, dim unswept corners in her brain, dog-eared corners of forgotten picture-books, a whole host of children; ordinary, healthy, grubby youngsters, who would reduce the silent beautiful rooms to their proper state of scrum and chaos. Above all, naughty children; she collected the warm cosy naughtinesses that has never been hers; gloated over each separate deed of infamy; as if in offering to the prim sad-eyed daintily clothed image on the wall.
... Dick was for ever robbing orchards and being chased by irate farmers. But then how could he help it, this eldest son of hers, just entering that close-cropped hobnailed condition that betokens the schoolboy? And Merle liked to see his rough bullet-head buried in her lap, in moods of half-sullen contrition; would have kept it permanently there, had Dick been willing. Which he wasn’t.
... Nobody-loves-me came wandering in from the garden. Nobody-loves-me was the ugly duckling, of whom visitors were wont to say: “Never mind, my dear; the Ugly Duckling grew to be a swan, you know,” a prophecy which comforted the sufferer not a whit. She was given to brooding, this particular infant; and possessed, in addition, Bad Habits: Bad Habits, such as Biting Her Nails. And, suddenly aware of the Bitten Nails, Merle generously handed over Nobody-loves-me to Peter, who lived next door, and who could therefore be freely endowed with undesirable progeny, “because anyway,” reflected Merle, “they couldn’t all be mine.” And Dick and the Boy-girl, ringleaders both, kept her hands pretty full. Boy-girl it was who erstwhile slid the banisters; she, who climbed trees, and made ladders in her stockings—such as no young lady should—and blarneyed the cook; and once, by way of an experiment, cut short not only her own mane of hair, but also the straggly crop of Nobody-loves-me. The incarnation of swift and mischievous daring, Boy-girl; but who could be angry with her long, when she brought her coaxing Irish charm to bear on the situation?
—Why Irish? Merle was not quite sure. She knew only that it was, undeniably, Irish charm. And finally solved the riddle by making the (shadowy) father of this swarming brood, a son of Erin.