That day Jack told Paddy, and the news began to spread swiftly, until it was known in all the neighbourhood that not only was The Ghan House to be let to strangers, but Jack O’Hara, everybody’s favourite, was going away across the sea to seek his fortune in foreign lands. And in every direction there was manifold sorrow and regret. People did not like to intrude upon Mrs Adair yet, but every day someone drove or bicycled to the Parsonage to know if it was indeed true, and tried the two little ladies sorely with their exclamations and questionings.
Moreover they were extremely busy. Going away to a foreign land—for all they knew, of heathens and cannibals—where there was never a woman to sew on a button nor darn a sock, it was, of course, necessary for Jack to have a regular trousseau. Everything had to be new, everything of the best, and every button and every tape sewed and sewed until it would really have puzzled Jack to get them off if he had wanted to.
In vain he expostulated and pleaded as the heap of clothes grew bigger and bigger. They would not listen to him, and were deaf to his plea that it would necessitate chartering a private ship if he were really to take ill the things they were preparing for him. When there was the slightest indecision about anything, it was always, “What do you think, sister?—will he want this?” or “Will he want a dozen suits of pyjamas” or “Three dozen pairs of socks?” or “Do you think he would be likely to require silk handkerchiefs?” And always, whichever sister asked the question, the other answered gravely, “He might,” and that was considered final.
The Parsonage rapidly assumed the appearance of a clothing warehouse or permanent jumble sale, and Paddy’s first real laugh broke out one afternoon when she came over to help sew on name-tapes. The order for the socks had accidentally been repeated four times, with the result that they were so literally swamped in socks that it seemed quite impossible to get away from them go where you would. All over the drawing-room socks lay everywhere. They hid in corners of the dining-room, disported themselves in the kitchen, smiled at you from the stairs, where they had been dropped in driblets when Miss Mary carried one armful to the first story, to spread themselves over the bedroom. In many places they were hopelessly mixed up with woollen underclothes, which also lay broadcast around, waiting for name-tapes; while flannel shirts and sleeping-suits of every hue and description draped themselves, gracefully and otherwise, over chairs and on the dining-room sideboard. The half-dozen cholera belts, that he might want, managed even to get into the rector’s study, though how or when no one knew, and it was only after a frantic search they were discovered. His suits of clothes he had always left lying about since he left off petticoats, also his boots; and now, as if unwilling to see old friends outdone, these were tossed pell-mell among the rest, and walk where one would you were pretty certain to stumble over boots or get entangled in trouser legs.
When Paddy first saw it all there was a sort of aching pause, and then she laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. Indeed, being somewhat out of practice, she laughed so much that she could not stop, and finally Jack attempted to stuff socks, and cholera belts, and woollen garments down her throat, to help her, while, governed by instinct, the two little ladies once more flew round collecting the breakables.
“I’m—I’m—so afraid you won’t have enough things to keep you warm,” gasped Paddy between her struggles. “It’s only about ninety degrees in the shade, you know, in South America; you really ought to have two or three fur coats and caps and a dozen nice warm blankets.”
Two minutes later nothing was to be seen of her except a pair of feet, emerging from a promiscuous heap of coats, waistcoats, socks, woollens, shirts, handkerchiefs, and an odd boot here and there.
CHAPTER XXI
Two Love Stories.
Christmas Day broke clear and frosty—the last Christmas Day of the old order. Everyone woke up with an oppressed feeling and a vague wish that for just this once the season of merry-making and gladness might have been omitted. For The Ghan House and the Parsonage it had always been such a particularly joyous time, the aunties always spoiling the young folks in every possible way, and Mrs Adair had been wont to say laughingly when they were children, that she had to develop into a sort of griffin armed with salts and soothing draughts, and follow them all around. And there had always been such presents too—ever since Jack, as a four-year-old youngster, managed to slip out of the Parsonage in his night-clothes and no shoes, on a cold Christmas morning, to get over to The Ghan House to show Paddy and Eileen his wooden horse. The gardener found him trying to drag the animal over the breach in the wall, his poor little feet blue with cold, but his eagerness was so great that he could think of nothing but getting to The Ghan House with that precious horse before any of the Parsonage folk caught him. So the gardener picked him up, horse and all, and carried him into The Ghan House kitchen to be warmed, and then went back to tell the aunties and fetch his clothes. Meanwhile Eileen had heard him in the kitchen, and managed to drag herself, burdened with an enormous doll, to the head of the stairs, where she was only just rescued in the nick of time from going down head first, doll and all.