“Faith! the answer’s so simple I’m ashamed to give it. The women will rule England—that’s an easy matter; but the Irish will rule the women.”
“Then you are one of the old-fashioned kind who approves of a lord and master?” Gregory Jessup looked up at her quizzically.
“’Tis the new fashion you’re meaning; having gone out so long since, ’tis barely coming in yet. I’d not give a farthing for the man who couldn’t lead me; only, God help him! if he ever leaves his hands off the halter.”
The laugh that followed gave Patsy time to think. There was one more question she must be asking before the others joined them and the conversation became general. She turned to Janet Payne with a little air of anxious inquiry.
“Maybe you’d ask the rascally villain who kidnapped me, when he has it in his mind to keep his promise and fetch me to Arden?”
As the girl left them Patsy turned toward Gregory Jessup again and asked, softly: “Supposing Billy Burgeman has fallen among strangers? If they saw he was in need of friendliness, would it be so hard to do him a kindness?”
The man shook his head. “The hardest thing in the world. Billy Burgeman has been proud and lonely all his life, and it’s an infernal combination. You may know he’s out and out aching for a bit of sympathy, but you never offer it; you don’t dare. We could never get him to own up as a little shaver how neglected and lonely he was and how he hated to stay in that horrible, gloomy Fifth Avenue house. It wasn’t until he had grown up that he told me he used to come and play as often as they would let him—just because mother used to kiss him good-by as she did her own boys.”
Gregory Jessup looked beyond the firs to the little lake, and there was that in his face which showed that he was wrestling with a treasured memory. When he spoke again his voice sounded as if he had had to grip it hard against a sign of possible emotion.
“You know Billy’s father never gave him an allowance; he didn’t believe in it—wouldn’t trust Billy with a cent. Poor little shaver—never had anything to treat with at school, the way the rest of the boys did; and never even had car-fare—always walked, rain or shine, unless his father took him along with him in the machine. Billy used to say even in those days he liked walking better. Mother died in the winter—snowy time—when Billy was about twelve; and he borrowed a shovel from a corner grocer and cleared stoops all afternoon until he’d made enough to buy two white roses. Father hadn’t broken down all day—wouldn’t let us children show a tear; but when Billy came in with those roses—well, it was the children who finally had to cheer father up.”
Patsy sprang to her feet with a little cry. “I must be going.” She turned to the others, a ring of appeal in her voice. “Can’t we hurry a bit? There’s a deal of work at Arden to be done, and no one but myself to be doing it.”