CHAPTER III
"I'm getting quite fond of our Stronghold," said Nell. "That's crooked, Denis!"
"What if it is, and you an artist! I'm not going to take the nail out,—no, not if it's standing on its head. Isn't my thumb pathetic pulp already?"
"Gerrls can't use a hammer! Gerrls always hit more thumb than anything else!" from the foot of the step-ladder came an impish voice.
"That you, Atom?" Denis flung himself down the steps. Sheila Pat fled, squealing, down the stairs and into the garden.
"What we would have done without this room to call our own, my brain refuses to imagine!" Nell observed.
"Wasn't it just like mother to think of it?" queried Molly, wistfully.
Nell nodded.
"And our teas! Thank goodness, Aunt Kezia desires us to have tea up here, in case some of her friends turn up. It's something to be looked upon as savages, after all, Mol!"
She was digging a drawing pin through a mounted photograph of a beautiful Irish wolf hound. She touched his head softly with her finger before she turned away. He was Denis's dog, and he had been left at Kilbrannan with friends. She picked up a photograph of her little chestnut mare. She stood with it in her hands, then turned suddenly and put it away in her drawer of the table. The hound was still Denis's, but Acushla was sold—sold to the same friends who were taking care of the dog. Nell clinched her teeth. The other horses had been sold, too. She gathered up a pile of photographs taken by herself and Denis, and laid them in her drawer. For a minute the sick longing for them all, for her home, her father and mother, gripped her and held her silent. Then she turned to Molly.