North, South and over the Sea Part 24

ELLENEY

Mrs. McNally's house was situated at the extreme end of the village, and looked not upon the street, but right out into the glen, so that when Elleney opened her attic window in the morning her blue eyes feasted on a wilderness of trees, exquisite at this season with an infinite variety of tints; for the tender bloom of an Irish spring is only surpa.s.sed in beauty by the glories of an Irish autumn. The undulating ma.s.ses that would in October glow with a myriad fires were now clad in the colours of the opal, delicate pinks and blues and greys of yet unopened buds forming a background to the pure vigorous green of larch or chestnut in full leaf, while here and there a group of wild cherry-trees--trees which in a few months would be clothed in the hues of the sunset--caught the morning light now on raiment as snowy as the summit of the Jungfrau.

Elleney gazed, and rubbed big eyes yet heavy with slumber, and gazed again; then she heaved a deep sigh, half of rapture, half of regret.

"It's beautiful, entirely," she said. "An' that big black hill at the back o' the trees is the grandest ever I seen. But I'd sooner be lookin' out at the little green hills at our own place, with me poor father--the Lord ha' mercy on his soul!--walkin' about on them."

She pa.s.sed her hand across her eyes now for another reason, and then sighed again, but presently took herself to task.

"Sure, I've no call at all to be frettin'; I have a right to know better, so I have. Me poor dada is gone where he's out of his throubles, please G.o.d; an' amn't I too well off myself here in this grand place, with me a'nt an' everywan so kind to me? Ye ought to be ashamed o' yourself, Elleney, to go cryin' an' frettin' when it's down on your knees ye should be, thankin' G.o.d. Hurry up now, an' on with your clothes an' get the breakfast! Sunday mornin' an' all, an' the girls down an' workin' about, I'll engage."

These remonstrances, which were made aloud with exceptional severity of aspect, but in the sweetest, softest little voice in the world, appeared to have the desired effect. The eyes were dried, the sobs checked, and soon Elleney emerged from her garret, and came clattering down the corkscrew stairs in her unyielding little best boots, clad all in her Sunday finery, every suns.h.i.+ny hair in its place, and her blooming face a vision of wonder and delight to any chance beholder.

One such beholder encountered her in the narrow pa.s.sage downstairs, and respectfully flattened himself against the wall to let her pa.s.s.

"It's a fine mornin', Miss Elleney," said the young man.

Elleney started, stared, and then broke into a laugh.

"It's you, is it, Pat Rooney? I didn't know ye, ye're so grand this mornin'. You do be generally all over flour--I never see you without lookin' out for flour."

"An' I never see you, Miss Elleney," responded Pat Rooney gallantly, "without bein' put in mind of another kind o' flower. Sure, you look the very same as a rose to-day."

"Not at all," laughed Elleney, blus.h.i.+ng, but quite frank and unconcerned; "I wouldn't ask to be thought aiqual to anything so grand as that. A daisy maybe, or--"

"Elleney!" called a shrill voice from some distant region. "_Elleney!_ We are all famished entirely. Girl alive, do ye forget it's your week for the breakfast? I never heard the like! We've been waitin' this half-hour."

"Laws," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Elleney under her breath, and with a conscience-stricken face. "I didn't forget; but sure I didn't know what o'clock it was, an' there's the eggs to boil an' all. Me cousin Juliana 'ull be murderin' me. I'm just bringin' it, Ju," she called back apprehensively. "And goodness only knows if the kettle 'ull be boilin', itself," she added in a distracted undertone, "an' I'm afther forgetting my big aperon upstairs, an' if I go an' black my best dress me a'nt 'ull be the death o' me."

"Aisy now, don't be tormentin' yourself that way," cried Pat soothingly. "Sure I'll just go along wid ye into the kitchen, an' if I don't have that kettle bilin' in next to no time my name's not Pat Rooney. It's me that's used to fires--ye'll see how I'll blow up yours for ye, miss. There now, wasn't it by the greatest good luck I looked in this mornin' to pick up my pipe that I left down below in the bakehouse? Cheer up, Miss Elleney--we'll not be keepin' them long waitin' for their breakfasts now."

Even while speaking the young baker had preceded the girl into the kitchen, possessed himself of the bellows, and blown up the fire; he now deftly dropped an entire basketful of eggs into a saucepan, and, with a large loaf in one hand and a knife in the other, began with almost incredible speed to cut off thick rounds.

"I suppose ye have the cloth laid?" he inquired presently.

"Me cousin Henerietta does that; I only has the breakfast itself to get, an' there's not much trouble in that, on'y I'm such a slowcoach, an' someway--I don't know how it was--my wits went wool-gatherin' this mornin'."

"Well, I'll tell ye what, miss; if ye'll wet the tay an' pop the pot down on the hob, the eggs 'ull be done, an' by the time ye have them brought in the bread 'ull be toasted illigant. Herself won't know ye, the way ye'll have got up the breakfast so quick."

"I'm very thankful to ye, Pat," said Elleney gratefully. "I'm sure I don't know what in the world I'd have done without ye. But it's too bad to be givin' ye all that trouble."

"Not at all, miss; no trouble at all. Sure I wouldn't have it on me conscience for you to be roastin' that lovely face off o' yourself at this terrible hot fire. The egg-cups is there on the shelf behind ye--I can see them from here. There now, sure ye have it all grand--wait till I open the door for ye. Now I'll have the loveliest lot o' toast ready for ye when ye come back. That thray's too heavy for ye entirely--it's a poor case altogether that I haven't got another pair o' hands."

Elleney's gay little laugh trilled out again, and she shot a glance of confiding grat.i.tude from under her thick dark lashes in the direction of the young baker which set the honest fellow's heart dancing, though he well knew how little such innocent warmth meant.

"G.o.d bless her," he murmured as he returned to his toasting fork; "if a dog done anything for her she'd look at it the same. If she wasn't the mistress's niece itself, ye might whistle for her, Pat, me boy."

Meanwhile Elleney had gone staggering along the pa.s.sage with her heavy tray, and now b.u.mped it against the parlour door as an intimation that she would like some one to open it.

This unspoken request was acceded to so suddenly that she almost fell forward into the room.

"I was waitin' on the eggs," she explained hurriedly, as she recovered her balance and tottered forward with her burden; "but here they are for yous now, and the tea is wet this good bit, an' the toast is very near ready."

The room was full of women; no less than eight of them sat expectantly round the empty board. Besides Mrs. McNally herself and her four daughters, three nieces had been added to her family on the death of their mother, Mrs. McNally's only sister.

"Sure they're all the same as me own," the good woman was wont to say, looking round affectionately at the girls. "There's times when I have to be thinkin' which is which--upon me honour, there is." And thereupon she would roll her broad shoulders, and wink with both eyes together after her own good-natured fas.h.i.+on; and no one who lived in the house with her could doubt that she spoke the truth.

Elleney had only recently been added to the group; she spoke of the head of the house as "me a'nt," but she was in truth no relation to the kindly soul who had taken compa.s.sion on her dest.i.tute condition, being a niece of the late Mr. McNally's first wife. Perhaps no other woman in the world would thus have admitted her to a circle already somewhat inconveniently large; but, as Mrs. McNally said, "One more or less didn't make much differ, an' sure the Lord 'ud be apt to make it up to her, an' Elleney was a useful little girl, a great hand at her needle, an' with a wonderful turn for business, G.o.d bless her."

Mrs. McNally invariably alluded to the odd little house where her many avocations were carried on as her "establishment," and spoke habitually of "the business." It would have been hard to define the precise nature of this business. There was a bakery attached to it, over which Pat Rooney presided, driving round the country each afternoon with the results of his labours. Juliana and Henrietta McNally sold groceries at one counter, and Matilda and Maria sold calico and flannel and boots at another. Hams and stockings hung in parallel lines from the ceiling, and there was a mysterious little railed-off chamber at the back of the house, reached by a swing door, on which the word "Bar" was set forth in gold letters, with a printed legend underneath announcing that Diana McNally was licensed to sell wines and spirits to be consumed on the premises. Here Bridget and Mary Nolan held sway. They were "stale girls" in the opinion of the neighbours, and therefore, as their aunt felt, the most suited for this post. Maggie, their youngest sister, migrated between shop and bar, and spent much of her time in rolling up "ha'porths o' twist" in sc.r.a.ps of newspaper. Elleney, who was "tasty," and possessed of a wonderful light hand, turned her talent for millinery to account, and soon Mrs. McNally was able to add trimmed hats and ready-made dresses to the other departments of her flouris.h.i.+ng concern. Predisposed as she was by nature to like any helpless young creature, she had rapidly grown to appreciate the girl's talents, and was now genuinely fond of her, though it must be owned that her daughters occasionably grumbled, and that the real nieces were undisguisedly jealous.

Bridget looked up now, with a sniff, as Elleney began with great haste to hand the eggs about the table.

"You've been long enough over it, anyhow," she remarked. "Mary and me was wonderin' whether 'twas milkin' the cow ye were or bakin' the bread."

"An' she hasn't brought the toast yet," grumbled Mary, drawing up her chair.

"It's very near done," returned Elleney eagerly. "Pat Rooney said he'd have it ready by the time I come back."

"Pat Rooney!" exclaimed the eight voices, in varying tones of amazement and disapproval; even Mrs. McNally's sounding forth a deep note of wondering concern.

"Pat Rooney, child! What brings him into the house at this time o' th'

mornin'? What brings him here at all to-day indeed?"

"He come to fetch his pipe," explained Elleney, scarlet with confusion; "and when he seen me so run, an' so put about because I was a bit behind, he offered to stay an' help me. It's him that's makin'

the toast."

Juliana McNally, a frosty-faced person, no longer in her first youth, looked round with a scandalised face.

"Did ye ever hear the like o' that?" she exclaimed. "Pat Rooney! The impident fellow! If I was you, m'mah, I'd walk him out o' the kitchen this very minute. Ye had no call to let him in at all, Elleney. Not one of us 'ud ever dream o' such a thing, would we, Henny?"

"Indeed we would _not_," returned Henny or Henrietta as she was indifferently called in the family. "c.o.c.kin' him up that way. He had a right to know better, an' not go forgettin' himself and his place altogether."

"Aye, indeed," chimed in Bridget. "Set him up! Him and his ould cart."

"Then if it was nothin' but the cart that ailed him, Bridget,"

returned Juliana severely, "there wouldn't be much to complain of.

I'll throuble ye not to be turnin' up your nose at the beautiful new cart me mother sent for all the way to Dublin. Ye paid pounds and pounds for that same cart, didn't ye, m'mah?"

"To be sure I did," responded Mrs. McNally promptly. "There, now, don't be upsettin' yourselves, girls. Elleney didn't know any better, she's that innicent, poor little girl. She won't do it again, I'll engage--will ye, Elleney? Ye see, me dear," she added in a confidential undertone, "we do have to be very particular in an establishment like this. 'Twouldn't do for me at all to go lettin' a boy like Pat Rooney forget himself. He's a very decent boy, poor fellow, an' his mother--the Lord ha' mercy on her!--was a most respectable poor woman. But he must be kept in his place, me child, an' ye see--"

"A-ah, m'mah, in the name of goodnsss sit down and pour out the tea,"

interrupted Anna Maria impatiently. "I'm dyin' for me cup. An' sure ye haven't brought us anythin' at all to eat yet, Elleney. Off with you now, an' bring that same toast whoever made it. The poor child's frightened out of her wits. Sure what harm if ye did ask Pat Rooney to help ye, itself--ye can soon get shut of him again. Ju, for mercy's sake take that crabby ould face off o' ye. 'Pon me word 'tis enough to curdle the milk."

Anna Maria's own face was of the round good-humoured order. "She took after the mother," the neighbours said, and had certainly inherited a large share of kindliness and jollity.