Mrs. Wyndham left the room, locking the door behind her and putting the key into her pocket. She told her daughters that they were neither of them to go near Peggy, and expressed anger and annoyance when Molly began to cry.
“You make me sick, Molly,” she said. “Now do control yourself; take a lesson from your sister. That girl’s spirit must be broken in, or I won’t live in the house with her. Thank goodness, she’s safe for the present. I declare, she has quite tired me out. Girls, you had better take the pony trap and drive over to see the Wrenns and invite them to tea to-morrow. I shall go and lie down in my bedroom.”
Mrs. Wyndham lay on her sofa close to the open window, and, the day being warm and she really tired, dropped asleep. “For once I’ve got the better of that Irish imp,” she murmured to herself as she dropped into placid slumber.
But Mrs. Wyndham had reckoned without her host. When Peggy found herself locked up in her spacious bedroom she first gave vent to some angry words, and burying her little face in the bedclothes, “drownded” herself, as she expressed it, in her tears. But tears with the Irish girl were something like the showers of an April day. Soon she was looking around her and smiling to herself. The window of her bedroom was wide open, and had she not escaped by that same window before on that very day?
“Faix thin,” she muttered, “it’s herself don’t know much. I’m not in dread of her, not at all, nor any of the grand folk I’m likely to meet here. Is it me that’s scared? Not me. Why, even the servants, they don’t paralyse me; us in Ireland”—here she threw her head back—“ah! it takes a dale o’ trouble to import us to a place like this. I declare, for the love o’ goodness! I think I’ll run away again.”
No sooner had the thought occurred to her than Peggy resolved to act upon it. She was out of the window and sitting on the roof, then she managed to scramble until she got to a great stack of chimneys. These she inspected with keen interest, not in the least regarding the fact that her white frock was turning black. She had now mounted up to a good height, and from where she stood she could get a glimpse of the yard. Some fowls of different sizes and sorts were strutting about there in a most important manner; a flock of geese came into view, led by a great white gander; and, finally, the king of the farmyard appeared, in the shape of a huge turkey-cock, who said, “Gobble, gobble, gobble,” as he was followed hither and thither by his troop of wives.
“The Lord be praised!” cried Peggy, “glory be to heaven, but it’s consoled I be.”
By turning and twisting and clinging, occasionally climbing up a little way and occasionally going down a little way, Peggy found herself right round at the back of the house and hanging over the farmyard. There was a good drop, however—at least thirty feet—between her and the ground, and this drop, try as she would, she did not dare to manage unaided. Several men, belonging to the farm, were moving about, employed over their several duties; not one, however, looked up to where the child with the bright eyes and face much blackened with chimney smuts, was regarding them wistfully. Presently, however, a burly-looking man came and stood exactly under the portion of the roof to which poor Peggy was clinging. He was a big man, at least six feet in stature. Here was her opportunity.
“Yerra, Pat!” she screamed, “hould aisy, for the love o’ God; don’t stir, man, as you value your immortal! I’m comin’.”
The next instant the man, who was christened Pat by the girl on the roof, felt a sharp bump on his shoulders, and Peggy, clinging with her dirty little arms to his neck, burst into a fit of laughter and tumbled to the ground.