The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 34

She looked at him searchingly, recalling the night when they had seen the campers in the glen.

"You don't want to answer questions?" suggested Elinor.

"Exactly."

"Then you do know something?" they demanded in whispers.

"What I know I am not ashamed to know. There is nothing wrong in what has been done--"

Billie sat on a stone fallen from the ruined walls and rested her chin in her hand. She was thinking and thinking.

"Feargus," she said at last, "we don't want to help you do anything dishonest and wicked--"

Feargus flushed. But the honest light in his blue eyes never wavered.

"I believe that what has been done is right," he said, "but I can't say anything more--"

"Come, Billie," called Miss Campbell's voice from the other side of the wall.

The four friends shook hands with the Irish boy. It was impossible to connect anything criminal and wicked with his honest, good-natured face.

"It's a shame," whispered Billie to Nancy, as she guided the "Comet"

through the wild scenery along the third lake, some time later in the day. "The Duke of Kilkenty is like a wicked magician who turns everything wrong and crooked that could just as easily be straight and right."

But of course she had no way in the world to know that the Duke of Kilkenty was at that moment engaged in dictating a number of letters to his secretary, which so surprised that young man, that it was with difficulty he grasped his pencil. The police were to give up all search for young O'Connor; detectives were to be withdrawn from the case. The Duke had other means of finding his son. A firm of architects were to send men down to discuss building model cottages; Father O'Toole was to call and see him at once. And still the list was not nearly attended to.

CHAPTER XXII.-HOW A DRIVE IN A JAUNTING CAR ENDED IN A MOTOR TRIP.

It was near a small village toward the west coast of Ireland where Elinor's relatives lived, and the first impression of the straggling, cobble-paved street flanked with wretched hovels was hardly cheerful.

They had left Miss Campbell and Maria at the inn to rest and the four girls had taken a jaunting car and started off, ostensibly for a drive, but really on a search for the Butler cousins.

The jaunting car of Ireland is a vehicle peculiar to that country alone.

It has two wheels like a dog cart, and the seats run sideways so that the pa.s.sengers sit back to back and see only half the landscape as they jolt along. The driver is supposed to sit on a cross-piece in front, right over the horse's tail, but he just as often sits at the side to drive his nag, urging him on with an occasional lazy flick of the whip.

To-day he shared one of the seats with Elinor and Mary.

"Do you know a family named Butler around here, driver?" began Elinor diplomatically.

"Shure an' there be a mony of that name in Oirland," answered the man, blinking at the sunlight, "and a good name it is, I'm thinkin'."

"I'm looking for the family of Thomas Butler," Elinor ventured.

"An' it's Tom ye're lookin' for, is it?"

"Do you know him?" asked Elinor surprised at his familiarity in the use of her cousin's name.

"Shure an' I ought to know him," chuckled the man. "An' if G.o.d and his howly saints are good to me, I'll know him for mony a day to come. He's a good soul, is Tom. He wur-rks all the time, for shure, and nivver rests at all, exceptin' whin the night comes an' he falls on his bed for weariness. He's a good fam'ly man, is Tom."

"Good family," repeated Elinor. "Yes, that's what I understood. It's a very good family."

"It is indade, Miss. But my manin' was different. Tom is a good provider. There's more than sphuds on his table. There's milk in a-plenty and eggs just fresh from the hins. Tom, he keeps two cows and a great number of powltry, includin' of six foine ducks and as many more tur-rkeys."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"DO YOU KNOW A FAMILY NAMED BUTLER AROUND HERE, DRIVER?"

BEGAN ELINOR DIPLOMATICALLY._]

Elinor's bosom friends were too alive to her own poignant anguish even to smile over this enlightening description of Tom Butler and his powltry, but it was a very difficult position and Nancy, irrepressible giggler that she was, held her breath until her face was purple and tears of laughter filled her eyes.

"An' what may you be wantin' with Tom Butler, Miss?"

"I-I thought I'd like to call on him and his family," faltered Elinor, not daring to look at Mary and feeling strangely glad that Billie and Nancy were sitting with their backs to her so that they could not see her crimson face.

"Is it from America ye've come?" asked the man, stirring up the old horse with his whip.

"Yes."

"Ye be knowin' some of the Butler kin there, I'm thinkin'?" asked the man with some excitement.

"Yes."

"Get along with you, you slow-movin' beast," exclaimed the driver, unexpectedly addressing himself to his nag. "Shure and the divvel's put weights in your hind feet. Ye're a snail and no horse at all, at all."

The road lay between fields a-bloom with red poppies and daisies.

Occasionally groups of barefooted girls pa.s.sed by and there was many a lounger by the wayside smoking his afternoon pipe,-which might with equal truth also be called his morning pipe and his noonday and evening pipe.

At last the car paused in front of a little stone cottage set in the midst of a small plot of ground. A woman was sitting in the doorway peeling potatoes and a tall pretty girl about Elinor's own age came running around the side of the house with a basket of eggs.

"I be bringin' a visitor for you, owld woman," the man called pleasantly. "A young loidy from the States who is acquainted from some of the Butler fam'ly."

"And indade, news of the Butler fam'ly will be like the sound of swate music to your ears, Tom," called the woman.

Elinor started violently.

"Are you Thomas Butler?" she demanded.

"Shure, an' I'm the mon," he answered amiably. "I'm Thomas Butler as was soundin' his own praises a while ago. If a mon don't sound his own praises, there's no one ilse as will do it for him."

The other girls laughed, relieved to give vent to their repressed feelings. So these were Elinor's much-boasted relations! Poor, proud Elinor, who always wore her hair in a coronet braid because she secretly believed her ancestors were of royal blood! They tacitly determined to leave the situation entirely in her hands, and when Elinor, whose face wore the expression of one who is about to take a bad dose of medicine, descended from the cart, they followed and shook hands with Mrs. Thomas Butler and her daughter, Eileen. Presently the jovial Thomas. .h.i.tched his horse and came into the house after them.

There was not much furniture in the room in which they had been hospitably invited to sit down,-a table and a few chairs; a set of shelves whereon stood the household china, and a few cooking utensils.

The floor was paved with stone slabs. On the mantel ticked a small wooden clock between two bra.s.s candlesticks, such as are used at all Irish wakes to stand at the head of the coffin. The room was unceiled at the top and crossed with smoke-blacked rafters. Chickens walked fearlessly in and out and a little fat pig stuck his nose in at the back door and grunted at them.

Eileen brought in a pitcher of milk and four thick gla.s.ses and shyly placed them on the table.

"An' now, ye don't be after tellin' me that ye know me fust cousin, Michael Butler, a sthreet car conductor in the city of Saint Loose, the name of the county has eschaped me moind?"