“I can’t—it’s important. And she’s not worrying. It’s very—” Bridgie paused for a moment, just one moment, to swallow that accusation of selfishness—“kind! Pixie darling, it’s about You.”
“Me!” cried Pixie, and dropped her spoon with a clang. Bridgie had already pushed back her chair from the table; Pixie pushed hers to follow suit. Such a prosaic affair as breakfast had plainly vanished from their thoughts, but Captain Victor had by no means forgotten, nor did it suit him to face emotional scenes to an accompaniment of bacon and eggs.
“After breakfast, please!” he cried, in what his wife described as his “barracks” voice, and which had the effect in this instance of making her turn on the tap of the urn so hurriedly that she had not had time to place her cup underneath. She blushed and frowned. Pixie deftly moved the toast-rack so as to conceal the damage, and proceeded to eat a hearty breakfast with undiminished appetite.
It was not until Captain Victor had left the room to pay his morning visit to the nursery, that Bridgie again referred to her sister’s letter, and then her first words were of reproach.
“How you could sit there, Pixie, eating your breakfast, as calm as you please, when you knew there was news—news that concerned yourself!”
“I was hungry,” said Pixie calmly. “And I love excitement; it’s the breath of my nostrils. All the while I was making up stories, with myself as heroine. I’m afraid it will be only disappointment I’ll feel when you tell me. Truth is so tame, compared to imagination. Besides, there was Dick!” She smiled a forbearing, elderly smile. “You can’t live in the house with Dick without learning self-control. He’s so—”
“He’s not!” contradicted Dick’s wife, with loyal fervour. “Dick was quite right; he always is. It was his parents who were to blame for making him English.” She sighed, and stared reflectively out of the window. “We ought to be thankful, Pixie, that we are Irish through and through. It means so much that English people can’t even understand—seeing jokes when they are sad, and happiness when they are bored and being poor and not caring, and miserable and forgetting, and interested, and excited—”
“Every single hour!” concluded Pixie deeply, and they laughed in concert. In the contemplation of the advantages of an Irish temperament they had come near forgetting the real subject of discussion, but the sight of the letter on the table before her recalled it to Bridgie’s remembrance. She straightened her back and assumed an air of responsibility, a natural dramatic instinct prompting her to play her part in appropriate fashion.
“Dick and I have been feeling, my dear, that as you are now really grown-up, you ought to be having a livelier time than we can give you in this strange town, and Esmeralda has been saying the same thing for years past. She feels we have been rather selfish in keeping you so much to ourselves, and thinks that it is her turn to have you to live with her for a time. We think so too, Pixie. Not for altogether, of course. For three or four months, say; and then you might go over to Knock, and come back to us again for Christmas. Of course, darling, you understand that we don’t want you to go!”
Pixie stared silently across the table. She had grown rather white, and her brows were knitted in anxious consideration.