Part 8 (2/2)
”It sounded well,” he sneered. ”No doubt if I were to write a novel it would be full of beautiful sentiments that sounded well--and I should care that for them in my heart,” and he snapped his fingers carelessly.
She looked up and descried Jack and Paddy coming over the Loch toward them.
”Here are the others,” she said, almost with an air of relief. ”They have just seen us and are coming in.”
”Hullo!” cried Paddy, as they came within earshot. ”I hope your Serene Highness is well.”
”Very well, thank you,” replied Lawrence, giving her his hand as the boat reached the landing-stage. ”I was just remarking to your sister, that you had not succeeded in getting yourself transported to a better clime yet!”
”No, the old proverb seems to be reversed in my case, I am not too good to live, but too good to die.”
”Or else too bad, and so you are always getting another chance given you,” remarked Jack.
”Be quiet, Jack O'Hara, for the pot to call the kettle black is the height of meanness. Come out of that boat and say 'how do you do'
prettily to this great man from abroad,” and her brown eyes shone bewitchingly.
Everybody in the neighbourhood teased Paddy, and Lawrence was no exception.
”'Pon my soul!” he exclaimed with feigned surprise, ”I believe you're growing pretty, Paddy.”
”Nothing so commonplace,” tossing her small head jauntily. ”What you take for mere prettiness is really _soul_. I am developing a high-minded, n.o.ble, sanctified expression; as I consider it very becoming to my general style of conversation. Father thinks it is 'liver,' but that unfortunately is his lack of appreciation, and also his saving grace for all peculiarities.”
”I should call it pique,” said Jack, ”if by any chance I was ever treated to a glimpse of anything so utterly foreign in the way of expressions, on your physiognomy.”
”Oh, _you_ wouldn't recognise it,” was the quick retort. ”'Like to like' they say; and I never find it is any use employing anything but my silliest and most idiotic manner and expression with you.
”But with Lawrence, of course,” running on mischievously, ”it is only the high-souled and the deeply intellectual that he is in the least at home with. Witness his companion last night, with whom he was so engrossed he could not even stop and shake hands with old friends from cradlehood.”
”To tell you the honest truth,” said Lawrence, ”my cousin, Miss Harcourt, had got so thoroughly into the swing of some extraordinary harangue, which required nothing but an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n every five minutes from me, and seemed to go delightfully on without any further attention whatever, that it would have been downright cruelty to interrupt such a happy state of affairs. I knew I should be seeing you all to-day, and at the last moment my heart failed me. I might add that the harangue lasted until we got home, and a final e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n on the door-step, with a fervent 'by Jove,' satisfied, her beyond my best expectations. If my life had depended upon it, I could not have told anyone what she had been talking about.”
”It must simplify life tremendously, to have such a perfect indifference to good manners,” said Paddy, who could never resist a possible dig at Lawrence.
To her, he was the essence of self-satisfied superiority, and she apparently considered it one of her missions in life to bring him down to earth as much as possible. Lawrence found it on the whole amusing, and was not above sparring with her.
”You are improving,” he remarked, with a condescension he knew would annoy her; ”that is a really pa.s.sable retort for you.”
”I am glad that you saw the point. I was a little afraid you might have grown more dense than ever, after being absent from Ireland so long.”
”Ah! Lawrence Blake!” exclaimed a voice close at hand, as the General and Mrs Adair joined them from a side walk. ”How are you? I'm very glad to see you back again. We all are, I'm sure,” and he bowed with old-world courtliness.
Lawrence thanked him, and walked on a few paces with Mrs Adair to answer her warm inquiries for his mother and sisters.
Afterward he told them about the dance to take place shortly, for his sisters' ”coming out” and left Paddy doing a sort of Highland Fling with Jack round the tennis court to let off her excitement. She tried to make her sister join in, but Eileen only smiled a little wistfully, and when no one was looking, stole off by herself to the seat down by the water, where Lawrence had found her in the afternoon.
There she sat down and leaned her chin on her hand, and gazed silently at the whispering Loch.
Was she glad or sad?
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