Pixie O'Shaughnessy

by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

“Roaming about, and actually daring to enjoy ourselves like other people,” retorted Bridgie, with what Mademoiselle was glad to recognise as a decided nip of severity; “but from this minute there must be no more playing until the work is finished. Dennis has cut the evergreens, and we must begin making wreaths at once, so as to be in order when Jack arrives to-morrow evening. We could have two hours’ work before dinner.”

“I loathe making wreaths; they are so dirty and prickly, and I take a pride in me hands; they are the only ones I have, and what’s the use of sleeping in white kid gloves, the same as if I were dressed for a party, if they are to be scratched all over with that hateful holly?” Esmeralda stretched out two well-shaped if somewhat large hands, and gazed at them with pensive admiration; but Bridgie was firm, and, scratches or no scratches, insisted that she should take her own share of the work. As soon as tea was over, then, the family descended to the servants’ hall, a whitewashed apartment about as cheerful as a vault, and but little warmer despite the big peat fire, where they set to work to reduce a stack of evergreens into wreaths and borderings for cotton wool “Merrie Christmases” and “Happy Newe Yeares” reserved from former occasions.

Pat and Miles cut the branches into smaller and more workable proportions. Pixie unravelled string and wire, and the three elders worked steadily at their separate wreaths. At the end of an hour they had progressed so well that it was suggested that the three fragments should be tied together, and the wreath hung in the hall, to clear the room for further operations.

The suggestion being universally approved, a stormy half-hour followed, when each of the five O’Shaughnessys harangued the others concerning the superiority of his or her own plan of decoration, and precious lives were imperilled on the oldest and shakiest of step-ladders. The boys could naturally mount to the highest step without a fear, but, when mounted, were so clumsy and inartistic in their arrangements that they were called down with derisive cries, and retired to sulk in a corner. Then Bridgie lifted her skirt and gallantly ascended five steps, felt the boards sway beneath her, and scuttled down to make way for her sister. The daring rider across country possessed stronger nerves, but also a heavier body, and the ladder creaked so ominously beneath her that she insisted upon the whole company acting as props, in one breath sending them running for hammer and rope, and in the next shrieking to them to return to their posts.

By the time that the wreath was really hung, the friction had reached such a pitch that Mademoiselle expected a state of civil war for the rest of the evening, and even wondered if the atmosphere would have time to clear before Christmas itself. She could hardly believe the evidence of her senses when the boys affably volunteered to clear away the rubbish, and Bridgie and Esmeralda went upstairs with wreathed arms, calling one another “Darling” and “Love,” with the echo of sharp taunt and sharper reply still ringing in the air! Certainly, if the Irish tongue were quick, the heart seemed even quicker to forgive an enemy, or pardon an offence.

By the time that Mademoiselle retired to bed that night the last remnant of strangeness had vanished, and she felt like a lifelong friend and confidante. She had seen the ménu for the Christmas dinner, and had helped to manufacture jellies and creams, while Pixie perched upon the dresser industriously scraping basins of their sweet, lemony, creamy leavings, with the aid of a teaspoon and an occasional surreptitious finger when her sisters were looking in an opposite direction. She suggested and achieved such marvels in the way of garnishing that Molly was greatly impressed, being a very plain cook in more ways than one, and solemnly asked for advice upon the killing of turkeys, when Mademoiselle had to acknowledge ignorance, and lost caste forthwith. Then Esmeralda invited her to a display of evening dresses in her bedroom, and wished to know which she should wear—the black silk with the net top, or the net top over a white skirt, or the black silk with no top at all, and Bridgie plaintively appealed to her for the casting vote on the great question of crackers or no crackers!

It was certainly a curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings, its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony. The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income and expenditure were so well balanced that there was always a margin to the good; but the Misses O’Shaughnessy, who bore themselves as queens in the neighbourhood, and were treated with truly loyal deference, owned hardly a decent gown between them, and were seriously exercised about spending an extra half-crown on a Christmas dinner!

“It’s the trifles that mount up! I am a miser about pennies, but I can spend pounds with the best!” Bridgie explained; and Mademoiselle smiled meaningly, for had not the order just gone forth that the Castle was to be “illumined” once more for the arrival of the son and heir?

On Christmas Eve the rain fell in torrents, and, after a morning spent in preparations of one sort and another, the workers felt the need of a little amusing recreation. This did not seem easy to achieve, in this lonely habitation set in the midst of a rain-swept plain, but Bridgie’s fertile brain came to the rescue, and proposed a scheme which kept the young people busy for the rest of the afternoon.

“I vote we have a fancy-dress dinner to-night!” she cried, at the conclusion of lunch. “Not an ordinary affair, but like the one the Pegrams enjoyed so much when they were spending the winter in Grindelwald. ‘A sheet and pillow-case party,’ they called it, for that is all you have out of which to make your dress. I will open the linen-box and give you each a pair of sheets, and a pillow-case for head-gear, and you must arrange them in your own rooms, and not let anyone see you until the gong rings. It really will be quite pretty—all the white figures against the flags and holly, and we shall feel more festive than in our ordinary clothes. I think it will be great fun, don’t you?”