Part 55 (1/2)
”Oh, ride on the back of the train, of course!” she cried, ”and home through the garden, just like we did as children. Oh, Jack, I've had to be so grown-up for two years. I absolutely refuse to be grown-up this Christmas holiday--we will--we _must_ be children.”
”Anything you like,” he cried, with the utmost readiness. ”Come along,”
as the train moved. ”Send up Miss Paddy's portmanteau. Good-by, Lawrence!” and they sprang on to the step of the guard's van and rode the short distance of railway to the Parsonage garden, leaving Lawrence to go home in the most unenviable frame of mind imaginable, which he later vented upon the household generally in his cold and cutting fas.h.i.+on, regardless of the fact that he was damping every one's Christmas.
But what cared Jack and Paddy?--least of all Paddy--for whom a joy seemed to have dropped straight from, the skies. What a noise there was, to be sure! and how Jack and Paddy _would_ talk at once, and make it impossible for any single sentence to be coherent.
At last, in desperation, Paddy picked up the little table-bell and rang it l.u.s.tily. ”If I can't be heard, you shan't, Jack,” she said, and, the moment he opened his mouth, started ringing it again. Jack immediately flew round the table to get the bell, and behold! if the two little ladies weren't collecting the breakables again, and casting agonising glances at the cups and saucers and plates on the breakfast-table--just for all the world as if two long years of separation had not rolled by since the last scrimmage, and these two mad things were not a day older.
If Paddy had not been in such a state of eager excitement, she must certainly have noticed sooner than she did an air of portent that still prevailed, as of some momentous event not yet revealed.
As it was, they all went to the little church as usual, Jack and the aunties sitting one side, and the Adairs on the other side, for the sake of old times; and came home again, and had their Christmas dinner, before Paddy got an inkling that further news was in the air. Up to then the whole conversation nearly had run upon Jack's adventures in the Argentine, and she had plied him with such an endless string of questions that there had really not been much opportunity for any other subject.
After dinner, however, they collected round a big log fire for a cozy afternoon, and a few minutes later a letter and parcel arrived by hand for Paddy. Both were from Doreen Blake, the parcel containing a handsome Christmas present, and the letter a piece of news that made her give a little exclamation of pleased surprise.
”Only fancy!” she cried. ”Doreen Blake is engaged. What fun! How I wonder what he is like!”
The others looked up with interest.
”Evidently he has come over for Christmas, and it is only just settled,”
Paddy ran on. ”I am pleased. Dear old Dorrie. He is a barrister, and they met last September, in Scotland. Really, engagements seem to be in the air. First Gwen Carew, then Doreen--and now I wonder who will be the third.”
A kind of subdued murmur made her look up quickly, and something about Jack and Eileen caught her attention for the first time. In spite of herself, it sent a little chill to her heart. She folded her letter and sat down on the floor, leaning against Aunt Jane's lap.
”Now,” she remarked, ”I'm ready to be told why Jack has come home in this unexpected manner. You don't any of you seem to have been very communicative so far.”
”I like that!” exclaimed Jack, ”when you haven't given anybody a chance to get a word in edgeways all day--but there! you always did monopolise the whole conversation.”
”You've come back more uppish than ever, Jack,” she retorted. ”Anybody would think you had come in; for a fortune at least.”
This seemed to tickle them all quite unnecessarily, and Jack burst into a hearty laugh.
”You all seem rather easily amused,” said Paddy, ”or else I am getting very dense. What is the joke?”
”Only that you fired a shot at random and made a bull's-eye,” laughed Jack.
Paddy looked more puzzled than ever, but suddenly she leaned forward and exclaimed:
”You don't mean that you have come in for a fortune, Jack?”
”Not exactly,” he answered, ”only a trifle of 20,000 pounds.”
”_You've_ got 20,000 pounds?” incredulously.
”Yes. An obliging relative of my mother's, I had scarcely heard of, died a little while ago and left no other heirs but me.”
For a moment Paddy was too astonished to speak, and they all watched her with eager happiness in their eyes. Undoubtedly there was more to come.
At last she looked up with a twinkle.
”My! if you'd only had it a bit sooner, Jack,” she said, ”we might have bought up all the chocolate in Mrs White's shop, and all the bull's-eyes, and all the licorice. Goodness! what a feast we would have had.”
”We'll do lots better than that,” he cried. ”We'll have new boats, and new rifles, and new fis.h.i.+ng-rods.”