By this time, Jack and Paddy were again seated on the table, swinging their feet, in front of the two little ladies who sat side by side on the sofa looking rather like two little Dutch dolls. Eileen had returned to her window seat, where she could keep one eye and one half of her mind on the mountains, and the other eye and the other half for more mundane reflections.
“News!” exclaimed Paddy, clasping her hands ecstatically. “Oh! scrumptious; I just love news!” while Eileen and Jack looked up expectantly.
“We have heard from Mrs Blake this morning, and they are coming back to Mourne Lodge,” continued Miss Jane, while Miss Mary, looking very pleased, murmured “Yes, coming back.”
“Hurray!” cried Paddy, “Hurray! Hurray! Just think of the dances and picnics and things. Why don’t you say you’re glad, Jack—or do something to show it?”—and before he quite realised it, she had caught him by his coat and pulled him half round the room. Roused instantly, Jack proceeded to pick her up and deposit her in the corner behind the sofa, amid frantic struggles on his victim’s part and a general flutter of the two little ladies to protect anything breakable in their vicinity. This, indeed, they did, partly from force of habit, for it was a standing joke in their circle that whenever Paddy and Jack were in the room together, Miss Jane kept her eye on one half of the room and Miss Mary on the other, and at the first symptoms of one of their customary “rough and tumbles,” one little lady fluttered off collecting breakables from one side and standing guard over them, while the other little lady did likewise on the other side.
“It’s all right!” said Jack, seeing their alert attitude, “I was only teaching her not to take liberties with my coat. Did you ever see such a scarecrow?” looking with delighted relish at Paddy’s generally dishevelled appearance as she emerged from her corner. “You’d think she ought to make a fortune with a face like that as an artist’s model for a comic paper, wouldn’t you?”
“My dear, he’s very rude,” said little Miss Mary, patting the dishevelled one’s hand.
“Yes, aunt, but he can’t help it, and we have to be kind to people’s failings, haven’t we? It is something to be thankful for that you have been able to keep him out of an asylum so long, isn’t it?” and then she ducked hastily to escape a shower of missiles, and the two little ladies flew off once more to the breakables.
Order being again restored, however, the news was further discussed, and the three young people learnt with varying degrees of eagerness that Mrs Blake intended both her girls to “come out” the next winter, and that Lawrence Blake, the only son, was going to remain at home for a time. This last piece of information contained in a measure the gist of the whole for the young people, but they each received it differently. Eileen turned her head, and with a slight flush in her cheeks gazed steadily across the Loch. Jack looked as near being annoyed as he felt at all warrantable, or as his insistently sunny face would permit, and Paddy, screwing an imaginary eyeglass into her eye, remarked in a drawl, “Remarkable! really remarkable! You are a credit to your charming sex.”
“In whatever capacity was that?” asked Jack, as if he marvelled.
“Never mind,” retorted Paddy; “because you have not the discernment to know a good thing when you see it, you need not suppose every one else is similarly afflicted. How delightful it will be to have a man among us again. One gets so tired of boys!”