The wedding was to take place in April, there was nothing to wait for, and several hearts eager enough to see it happily become a fact.
The Ghan House was being renovated throughout, and Eileen was busy with her trousseau—no time to spare between January and April.
Paddy helped a great deal. She did not like plain sewing—indeed, she very much disliked it, always contriving to prick herself badly and leave little danger signals, so to speak, where she had stitched. She might have been said to be preparing Eileen’s trousseau with her heart’s blood, only not with the meaning this phrase, beloved of serial writers, is generally intended to convey.
She had her own views as to quantities, which, however, as they did not at all fit in with her mother’s and Eileen’s, she wisely kept to herself. No use warring against the majority, and little matter either way. If the others thought dozens of everything necessary Paddy supposed it was all right, but, for her part, she wondered how so many clothes could possibly ever get worn, and where Eileen was going to keep them all when she was not wearing them.
“We might be making clothes for Jack as well,” she remarked once, surveying the growing piles; and when they told her laughingly Jack was getting his own dozens and half-dozens, she fairly gasped.
Nothing much had been said about that speedy flight of hers at Christmas. Both Eileen and the mother had attempted to win her confidence, but Paddy would not speak. Eileen had finally guessed.
“It is Lawrence, Paddy, isn’t it?” she asked.
Paddy, driven in a corner, consented, but would not go on.
Eileen had then fidgeted a little, and, blushing painfully, stammered:
“You would not let anything in reference to me two years ago influence you, I hope, Paddy.”