Dicky Fanshawe, as every one called him, was twenty-five years of age. He had enough money to do what he liked, and so, as a rule, he did nothing; at least, that was what his uncle, General Grampound, said about him. But as a matter of fact, he did a great deal, for wherever he went he made people feel happier and better.

He was not what people call a “good young man.” He spent a great deal of money in ways that people said he shouldn’t, but he also spent a great deal of money in a way that nobody knew anything about, for he was always ready to help a person in distress. He was a dead shot, a great cricketer, and he nearly always was in the first flight in the hunting field.

General Grampound, Dicky’s uncle, was very strict; ever since Dicky had been a boy General Grampound had found fault with him. Six months ago they had had a really fierce quarrel; it had begun over some trifle, hot words had ensued, and it ended by the General telling his nephew never to darken his doors again.

This command would not have broken Dicky’s heart, indeed he would have cared very little about it, only that he was in love with General Grampound’s ward, a dark-haired, beautiful girl named Violet Lestrange.

He had not seen her for six months, and as General Grampound intercepted all his letters to her, he could not write to her.

To-day he had left Dunboyne House, where he had been staying for the hunting, at ten o’clock, and it was nearly four when the outside car turned in through the lodge gates of Glen Druid.

As the car drew up towards the house front, Mr Fanshawe heard himself hailed. The voice seemed to come from the sky, and, looking up, he saw two heads projecting from a window in the grey old side of the house, the head of a girl with golden hair and the head of a rather pasty-faced little boy.

“Hulloo!” cried the heads; and an arm, presumably that of the boy, waved something by way of a flag, something that seemed either a huge and dirty pocket-handkerchief or an old dish-cloth.

“Hulloo!” replied Mr Fanshawe, waving his pipe.

Next moment a small potato, which Lord Gawdor had been playing desert islands^[1] with, caught Mr Fanshawe on the shoulder, and, rebounding, hit the car driver on the nose.

“Bad cess to them childer!” said the driver. “They’re the divil and all; never aisy but whin they’re aslape, I’ve heard tell.”

“They’re all there, aren’t they?” said Mr Fanshawe, as the car drew up at the steps. “Might have been worse if they’d fired turnips on us. Cousin Robert’s kids, I suppose.”

He jumped off the car and went up the steps, where old James, the butler, was waiting to receive him.

Lady Seagrave was a great friend of General Grampound’s, but she had not seen Dicky Fanshawe since he was a boy at school.

“Her ladyship is waiting to receive you in the blue boudoir, sir,” said old James; “but O Mr Fanshawe”—he looked with horror at the pipe which Dicky had laid on the hall table—“O Mr Fanshawe, her ladyship can’t a-bear pipes!”

“Never mind,” replied Dicky, lightly, hanging up his hat; “she can smoke cigars, if she prefers them.”

“I haven’t seen you for twelve years, Mr Fanshawe,” said the old man. “Last time I seen you was when you were a boy from school; how you have grown, to be sure! But it ain’t a question of cigars—her ladyship has a horror of all tobacco; and when gentlemen are here as are addicted to smokin’ they has to smoke in the scrubbery.”

“Where on earth’s that?” asked Dicky.

“Under the trees at the side o’ the house, sir.”

“Oh, the shrubbery you mean. All right—yes, I remember you well, James. Twelve years ago—why, it seems a thousand years ago since I paid that visit to Wapshot Park with the General—you were butler then too. Do you remember the day I tumbled out of the apple tree into the horse pond, and came home without any shoes and all covered with mud?”

“That I do, sir,” said James, grinning at the recollection; “and the face the General pulled when he saw you. This way, sir.”

Lady Seagrave was seated by the fire in the boudoir just as we saw her on the day Patsy Rooney made her acquaintance.

“How you have grown!” said the old lady, when she had shaken hands with her visitor and motioned him to a seat on the opposite side of the fireplace. “The last time I saw you, you were in knickerbockers and a turned-down collar. I hope you have grown in wisdom as well as in stature. You will find the house rather dull to-day, I’m afraid, but it will be more lively to-morrow, for I am expecting a house-party of quite interesting people.”

“I saw some jolly-looking kids at one of the windows upstairs,” said Mr Fanshawe. “Cousin Robert’s, I suppose.”

“Kids!” cried the old lady, raising her ear-trumpet. “I have an abhorrence of goats; how did they get into the house?”

“I didn’t mean goats’ kids, I meant children.”

“Umph!” replied Lady Seagrave. “May I beg you to say in future what you mean? It abbreviates conversation, and places the matter under discussion in a more clear light.”

“I am awfully sorry,” said Dicky; “but”—speaking very loudly and distinctly—“I saw some nice-looking children looking out of a window upstairs; I suppose they are Cousin Robert’s kids—I beg your pardon—I mean children.”

“I am not deaf,” replied the old lady testily, “but I can’t hear a word when people shout at me. I use this trumpet because I am subject to tinnitus aurium. Now repeat your remark in an ordinary conversational tone, enunciate your syllables, and don’t shuffle your feet.”

“I saw some nice-looking kids—I beg your pardon—I mean I saw some——”

“There is nothing to beg my pardon about,” cut in Lady Seagrave. “Well, go on; what were you going to say—you saw some kids. Where did you see them, and what about them?”

“I saw them on the road,” said Dicky desperately, for he felt quite beyond trying to explain his real meaning.

“That’s right,” said Lady Seagrave in a soothed voice. “Speak at that pitch and I will be able to hear you. You saw these creatures on the road—well, what were they doing?”

“I don’t know,” replied Mr Fanshawe meekly; “they were—being driven by a man.”

“Yes, but what about them?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say—what about them?”

“Nothing, I only mentioned the fact.”

“I see, just to make conversation. The art of conversation is lost, it seems to me; when I think of the sparkle and wit of the conversation of the young men of my day, and contrast it with the conversation of the young men of to-day, I am lost in wonder at what has happened to their brains. Your remark would be interesting if I were a goat fancier, which I am not. But you were never very bright, Richard Fanshawe, even as a boy; I remember that.”

“Thanks,” said Dicky, rather huffled, yet still amused at the outspoken old lady, who, when she took a pen in her hand to write an invitation, was most courtly and kind in her manner of expression (vide her note in first chapter of this book), but whose tongue in conversation was direct.

“All the brains in your family,” went on Lady Seagrave, “seems to have been absorbed by your uncle, General Grampound. You will see him to-morrow——”

“Good gracious!” said Dicky, “is uncle coming here?”

“Yes, he is coming as one of my guests.”

“Is—Is—Miss Lestrange coming with him?”

“She is.”

“Oh!” said Dick in a delighted voice.

“I beg your pardon—what did you say?”

“I only said Oh!”

“Oh what?”

“Nothing—I meant nothing.”

“You could not have meant less. Yes, Miss Lestrange is coming; and Mr Boxall, the Member of Parliament, who is greatly enamoured of Miss Lestrange, is coming too. He is worth seven thousand a year, and I believe, if I have any eyes in my old head, she returns his passion.”

Mr Fanshawe groaned.

“How old is he?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Mr Boxall.”

“He is only fifty-five,” replied Lady Seagrave; “though the fact of premature baldness adds perhaps to his apparent age. But Violet Lestrange is not frivolous-minded, she can appreciate true worth; and,” finished the old lady grimly, “she has got to marry him, for I have set my heart on the match.”

“I suppose you know that I have had a fight with my uncle,” said Dicky in a cheerful voice, for the description of Mr Boxall’s personal appearance had raised his spirits wonderfully.

“Yes,” replied Lady Seagrave, “and that is why I asked you here. I want you to make up with him and be friends. Now, like a good boy, go and brush your hair and make yourself tidy. You can amuse yourself in the library with books till dinner-time; I feel sleepy, and want to take my afternoon nap.”

The old lady seemed still to imagine Dicky Fanshawe the schoolboy he was twelve years ago, and he, nothing loth, rose and made for the door. In the hall outside he found Patsy Rooney.

“Mr James told me to ax you for the keys of your trunks, sir,” said Patsy.

“Oh, he did, did he? Well, as I’m going to my room I’ll open my trunks, as you call them, myself. Go on before me and show me the way. What’s your name?”

“Patsy Rooney is me name,” replied the other, leading the way upstairs, “but they calls me Patsy for short. I clanes the boots and the windys, and looks afther the childer since the governess was took sick and wint off to the infirmary wid the maisles.”

“What on earth is the maisles?” asked Mr Fanshawe.

“It’s what the pigs get,” replied Patsy, leading the way down the corridor, “whin they come out all over spots.”

“Oh, the measles, you mean?”

“That’s thim,” said Patsy, pausing at a door and opening it. “This is your room, Misther Fanshawe; and there’s hot wather in that big blew jug forninst you on the wash-stand.”

“You just wait and help me to unpack,” said Dicky. “My man sprained his foot, and I had to leave him behind. Here, lug that portmanteau out from the wall, till I open it.”

Patsy did as he was bidden, and then stood by watching the proceedings.

“Mr Fanshawe, sir,” said Patsy, after a moment’s silence, “is there guns in thim boxes?”

“Which boxes?”

“Thim flat ones by the windy.”

“Yes; those are gun-cases.”

“Mr James said they were; but, sure, they must be mighty small guns to be put in little boxes like thim. Me father’s the gamekeeper, but wan of his guns is twiced the length of wan of thim boxes.”

“I daresay; but these are breech-loaders, and take to pieces. How does your father load his guns, Patsy?”

“He rams the stuff down the muzzle wid a ramrod. And by the same token, there’s a parcel of ca’tridges for you, sir, I brought over from Castle Knock a week ago. They’re in the kitchen, I b’leve.”

“Yes, I ordered them to be sent on here. Put these shirts in that drawer.”

“Mr Fanshawe, sir,” said Patsy, as he put the shirts in the drawer, “would yiz like to have a shot at a burglar?”

“I shouldn’t mind,” replied Mr Fanshawe. “Stick this coat on the chair over there. What has put burglars in your mind?”

“I dunno,” replied Patsy, grinning and scratching his head; “but I dhrimt there was burglars in the house last night, and, thinks I to meself just now, if you was to stick a ca’tridge in wan of thim guns you might have fine sport some night soon, and Paddy Murphy’s back buttons might be blown through his wistcoat same as he blew old Mullins’.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Mr Fanshawe. “Who is Paddy Murphy—here, stick those trousers on the chair with the coat—and who is old Mullins?”

“I dunno,” replied Patsy, placing the trousers on the coat; “it’s me dhrames that do be addlin’ me. But if me dhrames come true it’s fine shootin’ you’ll be havin’ some night wid all thim guns, and it’s I that’ll be givin’ you the word whin to be loadin’ thim.”

“Here, get along!” said Mr Fanshawe, opening a hunting kit-bag. “Put these shirts in that top drawer, and don’t be talking nonsense; put these waistcoats in with the shirts.”

“The hounds meet to-morra at Castle Knock. I s’pose you’ll be afther followin’ thim, sir,” said Patsy, as he placed the waistcoats in the drawer.

“I will,” replied Mr Fanshawe. “What time’s the meet?”

“Nine o’clock, sir; and there’s a big baste of a fox in the Galtee woods where they’re goin’ to draw, wid a white tip to his tail, as ’ill go like clock-work, for I set me eyes on him on’y a wake ago whin I was settin’ snares the day before they stuck me in buttons and made a page-boy of me.”

“How do you like being page-boy?” asked Mr Fanshawe, who was working at the unpacking of his things in his shirt sleeves and, despite James’s warning, with a cigarette in his mouth.

“Faith,” said Patsy, “if it wasn’t for the childer it’s back to the woods I’d be to-morrow, for it’s nothing but ‘Patsy’ here and ‘Patsy’ there, and ‘Patsy, ye divil, what are you standin’ idle for?’ if I stops to rest me bones for the quather of a minit. Sure, it’s twelve pair of hands on the ends of me arms I’d want to plaze Mrs Kinsella; but as for the childer, faith, anything plazes thim.”

“So you’re acting as nursery governess as well as page-boy,” said Mr Fanshawe, who was beginning to perceive that Patsy was a person of an original disposition, and not at all a page-boy of the ordinary type.

Patsy grinned.

“They’re in prizen,” said he.

“Who are in prison?” asked Mr Fanshawe.

“The childer.”

“Why, what are you talking about? I saw them looking out of a top window.”

“Faith, and they’re in prizen all the same,” said Patsy. “That was the windy Mr Robert kicked the futball through; and between that and Miss Doris hittin’ me a belt on the nose wid an arringe, the ould lady gave orders they wasn’t to stir out of the top of the house till to-morrow mornin’.”

Mr Fanshawe, remembering the potato that had hit him on the shoulder, began to form ideas of his own about the children of his cousin Robert.

“They must find it rather dull,” he said.

“Not they,” replied Patsy. “They always find something to be afther; on’y half an hour ago when I lift them they were settin’ the dolls’ house afire wid a tin of paraffin.”

“Good Heavens! You don’t mean to say you let them!”

“Oh, they’re all right,” said Patsy. “Sure, they had it on the hearthstone.”

That evening, just before bedtime, the schoolroom door opened and Patsy’s head appeared.

“Mr Fanshawe’s give me half a crown,” said he. “And he’s got lave for the both of yiz to go to the meet to-morra mornin’ in the cart. I’m to drive you.” He put the half-crown in his eye like an eye-glass, drew the corners of his mouth almost up to his eyes by some extraordinary muscular action known to himself alone, protruded his tongue, waggled it from side to side and vanished, just in time to escape a Principia Latina aimed at him by Lord Gawdor.