Miss Kezia possessed an uncompromising conscience. She never allowed it to veil or excuse her motives. Yet, as she stood untying the strings of the bonnet that possessed such a weird attraction for the monkey tribe, she said to herself that she really must turn out and tidy a certain drawer at once. To an outsider the drawer would have seemed tidy enough, but Miss Kezia, sitting before it, the door still locked, methodically sorted out and refolded every article it contained. As she was refolding, for the third time, a certain scarf that was the last article to be tidied, the noise that had been surging, high and low, exuberant and sad, in her ears, as a never ceasing accompaniment to her tidying, suddenly swelled into sharper sounds, and she understood that the door of the Stronghold had been opened. She sat, rigid, a queer dread on her face. The dread gave place presently to absolute astonishment at the noise they managed to make. The rapid talk, the laughter, the jokes, bewildered her. The great affection that evidently existed between them and her young relatives surprised her.
"Old tenants," she surmised. "How very fond they are of their landlord's children!"
She experienced a distinct feeling of gratitude towards the Albert Hall, and the Irish concert that was to be held there that evening, and for which her relatives had taken tickets.
For a quarter of an hour by Miss Kezia's watch, the "tenants" bade their landlord's children good-bye. Three times the door was shut, three times there came bangs and thumps on it, and it was re-opened. And each time all the noise and talk began again.
Later on Miss Kezia ventured forth. On meeting the O'Briens, she observed with forbearance that she trusted they would make things tidy now that their father's tenants had gone. She went on to remark that it was strange so many of them should be in London. They were a good deal amused. They pointed out airily that they were no tenants of their father's; that they had never seen them till that day; that they had just come across them. It was the last shock poor Miss Kezia received on that 17th of March. She was very angry, and very genuinely bewildered. She watched them go off to their concert with a sense of relief. She felt a newly developed fondness for the Albert Hall.
CHAPTER XXIX
The day after St. Patrick's day was a bad one for them. It was a beautiful day, bright and cold; but, in the reactionary mood that had gripped them all in a great gloom, the very brightness was a thing to rail at.
At the breakfast-table Miss Kezia gazed at them astonished. She was not a keen observer, but even she, with the memory of yesterday in her mind, marvelled at the sudden depression.
Denis, in the hall, observed gloomily:—
"Wish I'd get run over, or save a millionnaire's life. Either'd make a break."