sly licking the
tears from her cheeks, as she hung school skirts in the cupboards, and
folded everyday garments on bedroom chairs, in readiness for use on the
following day.

"Now they are all sitting down and beginning to eat! There'll be
nothing but jam and cakes and elegant bread-and-butter--so thin you
might eat a plateful, and starve upon it! I wonder what they'll be
sending me upstairs. I couldn't look at a bit of plain food, but plum
cake would be medicine to me. Me digestion was always delicate.
Bridgie said so. `The child needs tempting!' I've heard her say, over
and over again, when the milk pudding came in at the door, and my
appetite went out. I must go to the schoolroom now, I suppose, for Miss
Phipps said I must be in my bed by seven. Ellen has the soft heart--I
wouldn't wonder if she brought me something nice to cheer me spirits!"

Buoyed up by this hope, she ran off to the classroom, and there was
Ellen herself at the door, looking at her with such kind, sorry-looking
eyes, as if there was nothing she would like better than to carry her
bodily downstairs.

"Your tea is ready, Miss Pixie. Miss Emily's orders were that I was not
to bring you any cake, but I have brought something else that you will
like better."

What could that be? Pixie rushed to the table, and oh, joy of joys,
there lay a big fat letter with the Bally William postmark in the
corner, and Bridgie's dear, well-known writing straggling over its
surface. No one in the world wrote such sweet letters as Bridgie, and
how dear of her to time this one to arrive at the moment of all others
when it was most desired! Pixie gloated over it with sparkling eyes,
kissed it, hugged it, poked at it with her fingers to discover exactly
how many sheets it might contain, and finally devoured it and the bread-
and-butter together in one long beam of delight.

"Littlest and dearest, do you want to see us all, and know what we are
doing? It is eight o'clock, and we have had three dinners in
succession, each lordly male waiting until the other had finished his
meal before he could resign himself to come indoors, and at the third
coming Molly sent for me to the kitchen to give warning for this day
month, which same I took smiling, for it's never a bribe she would take
to leave Knock Castle while an O'Shaughnessy was within its walls. It's
Pat that's sitting at the table now, eating apples and cracking nuts as
languid as if the day was his own,