Pixie OShaughnessy | Page 8

Major's voice was heard calling impatiently from the hall.
"Ten minutes late already. We shall need all our time. Tumble in, now, tumble in! You have had the whole morning for saying good-bye. Surely you have finished by now!"
The children thought they had hardly begun; but perhaps it was just as well to be spared the last trying moments. Bridgie and Esmeralda wrapped their arms round the little sister and almost carried her to the door; Pat and Miles followed with their hands in their pockets, putting on a great affectation of jollity in their anxiety to disguise a natural regret; the two women-servants wailed loudly from the staircase. Pixie scrambled to her seat and looked down at them, her poor little chin quivering with emotion.
"Bridgie, write! Esmeralda, write!" she cried brokenly. "Oh, write often! Write every day. Pat, Pat, be kind to my ferret. Don't starve it. Don't let it die. Take care of it for me till I come back."
"I'll be a mother to it," said Pat solemnly.
And so Pixie O'Shaughnessy went off to school.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE NEW SCHOLAR.
Major O'Shaughnessy and his little daughter reached London on the following afternoon, after a comfortable and unadventurous journey. Pixie had howled dismally all the way to the station, but had dried her eyes at the sight of the train, and even brightened into hilarious spirits on boarding the steamer. She ate an enormous dinner of the richest and most indigestible dishes on the menu, slept peacefully through a stormy passage, and was up on deck conversing affably with the men who were washing down, long before her father had nerved himself to think of dressing. The journey to London was a more or less disappointing experience, for, if she had not known to the contrary, she was not at all sure that she would have recognised that she was in a strange land. What she had expected, it was impossible to say; but that England should bear so close a resemblance to her beloved land seemed another "insult to Ireland," as Pat would have had it, and that it should in some respects look better, more prosperous and orderly, this was indeed a bitter pill to swallow.
As the train neared London, and other passengers came in and out of the carriage, Major O'Shaughnessy became conscious for the first time what a dusty, dishevelled little mortal he was about to introduce to an English school. He was not noticing where his children were concerned, and moreover, his eye had grown accustomed to the home surroundings, but the contrast between these trim strangers and his own daughter was too striking to be overlooked. Pixie had wriggled about until her frock was a mass of creases, her hat was grey with dust, and she had apparently forgotten to brush her hair before leaving her cabin. The Major was too easy-going to feel any distress at this reflection. He merely remarked to himself whimsically that, "the piccaninny would astonish them!" meaning the companions to whom she was about to be introduced, and decided then and there to take her straight to her destination. This had been the only point upon which he and his young daughter had been at variance; for from the start Pixie had laid down, as her idea of what was right and proper, that her father should take her for the night to a grand hotel, introduce her next morning to the Tower, the Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's, and deposit her at Surbiton in the afternoon. The Major's ideas on the subject were, however, that an exacting little daughter was a drawback to a man's enjoyment of a visit to London, and that there were other forms of amusement which he would prefer to a visit to the before-mentioned historic resorts. With accustomed fluency, he found a dozen reasons for carrying out his own wishes, and propitiated Pixie by promising that Jack should take her sight-seeing before many weeks were over.
"I'll tell Miss Phipps that I wish you to go out with your brother on Saturday afternoons, and you'll have a fine time together seeing all that is to be seen. Far greater fun than if we tried to hurry about with not a minute to spare."
"I like to do things now," sighed Pixie pensively; but as usual she resigned herself to the inevitable, and a box of chocolates, bought at Waterloo, sufficed to bring back the smiles to her face and restore her equanimity.
The arrival at Surbiton Station was a breathless experience, though it was a distinct blow to her vanity to find that no deputation from Holly House was in waiting to receive Patricia O'Shaughnessy with the honours she deserved. No one took any notice of her at all. When the cabman, when directed to drive to Holly House,