“You’ve got to begin by sitting on the floor, and playing, ‘Brother, I’m bobbed!’” she announced. “You’ll find it rather hot work, but you can cool down afterward, while someone takes your place.”
“I’ve a great admiration for you, Paddy,” he answered calmly. “But not for all the Paddys in the world will I sit on the floor and play, ‘Brother, I’m bobbed!’”
“Tut tut!” mimicked, Paddy, screwing up an imaginary eyeglass. “Your—your—shoe a little too tight—did you say!—or was it your—ahem—divided skirt...?”
“I said I should not play ‘Brother, I’m bobbed,’” repeated Lawrence, laughing; “but if a score has to be kept of the bobbing—whatever process that may be—I am at your service.”
“You can go and sit with Daddy, and the old people,” scathingly. “You might have guessed my birthday party wasn’t very likely to be reclining in arm-chairs, and conversing politely.”
“May I, as a special favour, be allowed first to mention a package in the hall, intended for your Serene Highness—?”
“A package!—in the hall!—Oh! go and sit where you like, and do what you like,” and she flew off to look for it, returning triumphantly with the finest production in confectionery that Newry could boast.
After that Lawrence was left in peace, to sit by the delighted old soldier, who laughed till he was again ill, at the wild scenes which ensued; until the climax of Paddy on the floor, with a small table of bric-à-brac, and the coal box on top of her, with the coals flying in all directions, proved too much for him. When she at last scrambled to her feet, with a face Jack and Doreen Blake had surreptitiously smudged with coal dust, he had to be led away to his own den for a smoke, whither Lawrence accompanied him. “These Scrimmage Parties are too much for me now-a-days,” said the fine old warrior, sinking back into his big chair. “Lord! what a girl she is!—what a girl she is!” and there was a ring of delight and pride in his voice, which his gentle, beautiful daughter never inspired.
“She informed me this morning she was not a girl,” remarked Lawrence. “She said she was neither a girl, nor a boy, she was Paddy!”
The father chuckled in delight. “It’s about true, for there’s not her like anywhere. Begorra, lad!—if she’d been a boy—there’d not have been a soldier in the British army to touch her. But she’ll go far yet,” nodding his head sagely. “I’ll give any beautiful woman points in another two or three years, and back Paddy against her. While the other woman’s doing her hair, and arranging her dress, and thinking what to say, Paddy’ll be getting there. She won’t need to stop and think. She’ll be just herself, and if I’m not much mistaken, the men’ll go down before her like ninepins. O Lord!—and she’ll snap her fingers in their faces, and go rampaging on, like a real, thoroughbred Irish Fusilier.