The Love Affairs of Pixie | Page 7

of a good cook, then--give me herbs!" she would cry, shrugging her pretty shoulders, and her husband agreed--with reservations!
He was a very happy, a very contented man, and every day of his life he thanked God afresh for his happy home, for his children, for the greatest treasure of all, sweet Bridget, his wife!
To-day, however, the disclosure had nothing to do with domestic revolutions, and Bridgie's tone in making her announcement held an unusual note of tragedy.
"Dick, guess what! You'll never guess! Pixie's grown-up!"
For a moment Captain Victor looked as was expected of him--utterly bewildered. He lay back in his chair, his handsome face blank and expressionless, the while he stared steadily at his wife, and Bridgie stared back, her distress palpably mingled with complacence. Speak she would not, until Dick had given expression to his surprise. She sat still, therefore, shaking her head in a melancholy mandarin fashion, which had the undesired effect of restoring his complacence.
"My darling, what unnecessary woe! It's astounding, I grant you; one never expected such a feat of Pixie; but the years will pass--there's no holding them, unfortunately. How old is she, by the way? Seventeen, I suppose--eighteen?"
"Twenty--nearly twenty-one!"
Bridgie's tone was tragic, and Dick Victor in his turn looked startled and grave. He frowned, bit his lip, and stared thoughtfully across the room.
"Twenty-one? Is it possible? Grown-up, indeed! Bridgie, we should have realised this before. We have been so content with things as they were that we've been selfishly blind. If Pixie is over twenty we have not been treating her fairly. We have treated her too much as a child. We ought to have entertained for her, taken her about."
Bridgie sighed, and dropped her eyelids to hide the twinkle in her eyes. Like most husbands Dick preferred a quiet domestic evening at the end of a day abroad: like most wives Bridgie would have enjoyed a little diversion at the end of a day at home. Sweetly and silently for nearly half a dozen years she had subdued her preferences to his, feeling it at once her pleasure and her duty to do so, but now, if duty suddenly assumed the guise of a gayer, more sociable life, then most cheerfully would Irish Bridgie accept the change.
"I think, dear," she said primly, "it would be wise. Esmeralda has said so many a time, but I took no notice. I never did take any notice of Esmeralda, but she was right this time, it appears, and I was wrong. Imagine it! Pixie began bemoaning that she was not pretty, and it was not herself she was grieving for, or you, or Me!"--Bridgie's voice sounded a crescendo of amazement over that last pronoun--"but whom do you suppose? You'll never guess! Her future lovers!"
It was just another instance of the provokingness of man that at this horrible disclosure Dick threw himself back in his chair in a peal of laughter; he laughed and laughed till the tears stood in his eyes, and Bridgie, despite herself, joined in the chorus. The juxtaposition of Pixie and lovers had proved just as startling to him as to his wife, but while she had been scandalised, he was frankly, whole-heartedly amused.
"Pixie!" he cried. "Pixie with a lover! It would be about as easy to think of Patsie. Dear, quaint little Pixie! Who dares to say she isn't pretty? Her funny little nose, her big, generous mouth are a hundred times more charming than the ordinary pretty face. I'll tell you what it is, darling,"--he sobered suddenly;--"Pixie's lover, whoever he may be, will be an uncommonly lucky fellow!"
Husband and wife sat in silence for some moments after this, hand in hand, as their custom was in hours of privacy, while the thoughts of each pursued the same subject--Pixie's opening life and their own duty towards it.
On both minds was borne the unwilling realisation that their own home was not the ideal abode to afford the experience of life, the open intercourse with young people of her own age which it was desirable that the girl should now enjoy. As a means of adding to his income Captain Victor had accepted the position of adjutant to a volunteer corps in a northern city, and, as comparatively new residents, his list of acquaintances was but small.
Esmeralda, or to speak more correctly, Joan, the second daughter of the O'Shaughnessy family, as the wife of the millionaire, Geoffrey Hilliard, possessed a beautiful country seat not sixty miles from town, while Jack, the eldest brother, had returned to the home of his fathers, Knock Castle, in Ireland, on the money which his wife had inherited from her father, after he had become engaged to her in her character of a penniless damsel. Jack was thankful all his life to remember that fact, though his easy-going Irish