"It is," said Joan. "And Mr. Abbott's coming to supper."
She fled in a panic.
"Will the child never have done with chains?" Hannah demanded as the weeks slipped by.
"When it wasn't Don, it was old Adam. And now it's someone else. And Mr. O'Neill's got more patience, Hughie, than I ever thought was in him."
"I like him better t'other way," said Hughie. "Things is livelier. I'd sooner be diggin' dots than dronin' along so poky."
"It's my opinion," put in Hannah tartly, "that last summer just about spoiled your taste for anything but the life of a pirate. If you must have somebody throwin' a bottle at your head or dumpin' ministers into the river or diggin' treasure, things have come to a pretty pass."
Hughie whistled.
"I ain't the only one that's restless," he defended. "Don's as contraptious as a mule. And I've caught a look in young O'Neill's eye once or twice like old Sim's black mare, mettlesome and anxious to bolt."
"Until Joan slips into a chair with a book or some work," snapped Hannah. "Then he's a lamb. If I was Mr. O'Neill I'd thrash Don into common sense and I'd remind t'other young man, son or no son, that the nurse ain't earnin' her keep. Joan's earnin' it for her."
Alone, Kenny owned, one can not be gay and lunch in glens where the wee folk hide and whisper. And Joan and he himself had chains. He accepted the summer with a wry grimace, reading in its irksome demands a chance for real requital. He found no bitterness in the cup he had set himself to drink. It was the price of Brian's welfare and Brian's peace of mind. But he hungered for Joan and the long, gay days of another summer. When had she grown up so, he wondered impatiently. He missed the romping child with the sun shadows in her hair; he missed her eager tears and laughter. To his skillful touch they had been but strings of a beautiful harp, subtly, unfailingly responsive. Ah! she had been a beautiful promise—that starved child of a summer ago—but the promise fulfilled in the woman, he owned with a rush of feeling, he loved more. Her essential tenderness, strumming kindred chords in his sensitive Celtic soul, aroused an unfamiliar sense of the holiness of love.