Next morning came with a burst of sunshine and a windy, cloudless sky. Pinckney, dressing with his window open, could see the park with the rooks wheeling and cawing over the trees, whilst the warm wind brought into the room all sorts of winter scents on the very breath of summer.

This rainy land where the snow rarely comes has all sorts of surprises of climate and character. Nothing is truly logical in Ireland, not even winter. That is what makes the place so delightful to some minds and so perplexing to others.

Hennessey was staying for a day or two to go over accounts and explain the working of the estate to Pinckney.

He was in the hall when the latter came down, and gave him good morning.

“Where’s your mistress?” said Hennessey to old Byrne, as they took their seats at the breakfast table.

“Faith, she’s been out since six,” said Byrne. “She came down threatenin’ to skin Rafferty alive for layin’ fox thraps in the woods, then she had a bite of bread and butter and a cup of tea Norah made for her, and off she went with Rafferty to hunt out the thraps and take them up. It’s little she cares for breakfast.”

“I was the same way myself when I was her age,” said Hennessey to Pinckney. “Up at four in the morning and out fishing in Dublin Bay—it’s well to be young.”

“Look here,” said the young man, as Byrne left the room, “she was out till eleven last night in the woods; she knocked me up as I was sitting in the library and I let her in. I don’t see anything wrong in the business, but all the same, it’s not a particularly safe proceeding and I suppose a mother or father would have jawed her—I couldn’t. I suppose I showed by my manner that I didn’t approve of her being out so late, for she seemed in a huff as she went up to bed. My position is a bit difficult, but I’m hanged if I’m going to do the heavy father or careful mother business. If she was only a boy, I could talk to her like a Dutch uncle, but I don’t know anything about girls. I wish—”

Pinckney’s wish remained forever unexpressed, for at the moment the door opened and in came Phyl.

Her face was glowing with the morning air and she seemed to have forgotten the business of the night before as she greeted Pinckney and the lawyer and took her place at the table.

“Phyl,” said the lawyer, half jocularly, “here’s Mr. Pinckney been complaining that you were wandering about all night in the woods, knocking him up to let you in at two o’clock in the morning.”

Phyl, who was helping herself to bacon, looked up at Pinckney.

“Oh, you cad,” said her eyes. Then she spoke:

“I came in at eleven. If I had known, I would have called up Byrne or one of the servants to let me in.”

Pinckney could have slain Hennessey.

“Good gracious,” he said. “I wasn’t complaining. I only just mentioned the fact.”

“The fact that I was out till two,” said Phyl, with another upward glance of scorn.

“I never said any such thing. I said eleven.”

“It was my loose way of speaking; but, sure, what’s the good of getting out of temper?” put in Hennessey. “Mr. Pinckney wasn’t meaning anything, but you see, Phyl, it’s just this way, your father has made him your guardian.”

“My what!” cried the girl.

“Oh, Lord!” said Pinckney, in despair at the blundering way of the other. Then finding himself again and the saving vein of humour, without which man is just a leaden figure:

“Yes, that’s it. I’m your guardian. You must on no account go out without my permission, or cough or sneeze without a written permit—Oh, Phyl, don’t be thinking nonsense of that sort. I am your guardian, it seems, and by your father’s special request, but you are absolutely free to do as you like.”

“A nice sort of guardian,” put in Hennessey with a grin.

“I am only, really, guardian of your money and your interests,” went on the other, “and your welfare. When you came in last night late, I was a bit taken aback and I thought—as a matter of fact, I thought it might be dangerous being out alone in this wild part of the country so late at night, but I did not want to interfere; you can understand, can’t you? What I want you to get out of your mind is, that I am that odious thing, a meddling person. I’m not.”

Phyl was very white. She had risen from the table and was at the window.

Here was her dream come true of the bearded American who had suddenly appeared to claim her and Kilgobbin and the servants and everything.

Pinckney had not a beard, but he was an American and he had come to claim everything. The word guardian carried such a force and weight and was so filled with fantastic possibilities to the mind of Phyl, that she scarcely heard his soft words and excuses.

Phyl had the Irish trick of running away with ideas and embroidering the most palpable truths with fancies. It was an inheritance from her father, and she stood by the window now unable to speak, with the word “Guardian” ringing in her ears and the idea pressing on her mind like an incubus.

Hennessey had risen up. He was the first to break silence.

“There’s no use in meeting troubles half way,” said he vaguely. “You and Phyl will get along all right when you know each other better. Come out, the two of you, and we’ll go round the grounds and you will be able to see for yourself the state of the house and what repairs are wanting.”

“One moment,” said Pinckney. “I want to tell Phyl something—I’m going to call you Phyl because I’m your guardian—d’you mind?”

“No,” said Phyl, “you can call me anything you like, I suppose.”

“I’m not going to call you anything I like—just Phyl— Well, then, I want to tell you what we have to do. It’s not my wishes I have to carry out but your father’s. He wanted to let this house.”

“Let Kilgobbin!”

“Yes, that is what he said. He wanted to let it to a good tenant who would look after it till you are of age. I think he was right. You see, you could not live here all alone, and if the place was shut up it would deteriorate.”

“It would go to wrack and ruin,” said Hennessey.

“And the servants?” said Phyl.

“We will look after them,” said Pinckney, “the new tenant might take them on; if not, we’ll give them time to get new places.”

“Byrne’s been here before I was born,” said the girl, with dry lips, “so has Mrs. Driscoll. They are part of the place; it would ruin their lives to send them away.”

“Well,” said Pinckney, “I don’t want to be the ogre to ruin their lives; you can do anything you like about them. If the new tenant didn’t take them, you might pension them. I want you to be perfectly happy in your mind and I want you to feel that though I am, so to speak, the guardian of your money, still, that money is yours.”

She was beginning to understand now that not only was he striving to soothe her feelings and propitiate her, but that he was very much in earnest in this business, and crowding through her mind came a great wave of revulsion against herself.

Phyl’s nature was such that whilst always ready to fly into wrath and easily moved to bitter resentment, one touch of kindness, one soft word, had the power to disarm her.

One soft word from an antagonist had the power to wound her far more than a dozen words of bitterness.

Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach, she stood for a moment unable to speak. Then she said, raising her eyes to his:

“I am sure you mean to do what is for the best.—It was stupid of me—”

“Not a bit,” said the other, cheerfully. “I want to do the things that will make you happy—that’s all. I’m a business man and I know the value of money. Money is just worth the amount of happiness it brings.”

“Faith, that’s true,” said Hennessey, who had taken his seat again and was in the act of lighting a cigar.

“When I was a boy,” went on the other. “I was always kept hard up by my father. It was like pulling gum teeth to get the price of a fishing rod out of him. When I think of all the fun I might have bought with a few dollars, it makes me wild. You can’t buy fun when you get old; you may buy an opera house or a yacht, but you can’t buy the real stuff that makes life worth living.”

Phyl glanced out of the window at the park, then as though she had found some inspiration there, she turned to Pinckney.

“If you don’t mind about the money, then why don’t you let me live here instead of letting the place? I can live here by myself and I would be happy here. I won’t be happy if I leave it.”

“Well,” said Pinckney, “there’s your father’s wish, first of all.”

“I’m sure if he knew how I felt, he wouldn’t mind,” said Phyl mournfully, turning her gaze again to the park.

“On top of that,” went on Pinckney, “there’s—your age. Phyl, it wouldn’t ever do; it’s not I that am saying it, it’s custom, the world, society.”

Phyl, like the hooked salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be broken or bent.

She felt for a moment a revolt against herself for having fallen to the lure and allowed herself to come to friendly terms with him. Then this feeling faded a bit. The very young are very weak in the face of constituted authority—besides, there was always at the back of Pinckney her father’s wish.

“And then again, on top of that,” he went on, “there’s the question of your coming to live with us; your father wished it.”

“In America!” cried Phyl. “Do you mean I am to live in America?”

“Well, we live there; why not? It’s not a bad place to live in—and what else are you to do?”

She could not answer him. This time she saw that the bogey man had got her and no mistake. America to her seemed as far as the moon and far less familiar. If Pinckney had declared that it was necessary for her to die, she would have been a great deal more frightened, but the prospect would not have seemed much more desolate and forbidding and final.

He saw at once the trouble in her mind and guessed the cause. He had a rare intuition for reading minds, and it seemed to him he could read Phyl’s as easily as though the outside of her head were clear glass—he had cause to modify this cocksure opinion later on.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “If you don’t like America when you see it, you can come back to Ireland. I daresay we can arrange something; anyhow, don’t let us meet troubles half way.”

“When am I to go?” said Phyl.

“Sure, Phyl, you can stay as long as you like with us,” said Mr. Hennessey. “The doors of 10, Merrion Square, are always open to you, and never will they be shut on you except behind your back.”

Pinckney laughed; and a servant coming in to clear the breakfast things, Hennessey led the way from the room to show Pinckney the premises.