"Look here, Henny, do shut up. Let's dance a jig on the top of the piano. We've got our outdoor shoes on and they are covered with mud. That little wretch is so particular about the top of her piano—always dusting it and polishing it; and then, I say, can't we go to her room and search for the key?"
Henny was not one long to endure hopeless grief. The next moment she had jumped on the top of the piano, and, encircling Daisy in her arms, proceeded to do the one thing she could do fairly decently—that was the steps of a Scotch reel. She whistled the tune with her full rosy lips, and the two girls danced faster and faster until, suddenly going too near the narrow part of the instrument, they both fell over with a resounding crash.
Just at that moment Burke solemnly opened the drawing-room door and announced the Honourable Mrs. Leach and Miss Leach. How it so happened that this Mrs. Leach was a friend in a sort of way of the second Mrs. O'Brien. She therefore thought it her duty to call on the poor lady's daughters, although her own daughter Kathleen by no means approved of the idea.
The sight that met their eyes was decidedly startling: Two girls prone on the floor, and the top of the piano hopelessly injured by clumsy boots and covered from end to end with mud; but Daisy, quick as lightning, saved the situation. Henrietta felt slightly stunned, but Daisy always kept her composure.
"We're so glad to see you, Mrs. Leach," she said. "Darling mumsie wrote so often about you, and said you were quite cheearming. We are glad to see you—we poor lone orphans. And what a pretty daughter you have got, Mrs. Leach. What's her name—Sally or Patty, or what?"
"My name is Kathleen," said that young lady, in a very stiff voice.
"I hope you are not hurt, Miss Mostyn," said Mrs. Leach, going up to Henrietta. "What an awful mess that lovely piano is in! Is it possible that you were dancing on the top? How terribly vexed little Maureen will be!"
"Well, she locked it, spiteful cat," said Henrietta, "so we thought we would pay her out. We are two lone orphans. You'll stay and have tea with us, won't you, Mrs. Leach; mumsie-pumsie's friend—you will, won't you now? I'll ring and tell Burke to get tea at once."
"No, I'm greatly afraid I cannot stay," said Mrs. Leach. "I have several other calls to make."