The Gambler Part 21

"Don't be mindin' an ould woman like me, sir," she said deprecatingly.

"'Twas the thought of the children that come over me. I couldn't help it. I had the both of thim in me arms before they could cry. Small wonder me heart would be in thim! Many's the sad day I put over me, thinkin' what would become of them, wid the poor masther goin' to the bad. G.o.d forgive me for sayin' it! And sure now 'tis all settled and done for--and the heavth of it off of our minds. Praise be to G.o.d!"

She paused to dry her tears.

"And what would you be thinkin' to do wid thim?" she asked presently in a new and more personal tone.

Milbanke did not answer at once. His eyes strayed uneasily from one object in the yard to another, while the frown of perplexity that had puckered his brow since a.s.shlin's death reappeared more prominently than before. At last, with a certain expression of puzzled resolution, he looked up and met Hannah's attentive gaze.

"To tell you the truth, Hannah," he said, "that is the precise question I have been asking myself ever since your poor master died."

There was a wait of some seconds while his listener digested the information; then she nodded her head with slow impressiveness.

"I seen it meself," she said again. "Sure, I seen it as plain as daylight. 'There's somethin' on his mind,' I says to meself. An' if it isn't the poor masther's death,' I says, 'thin it's nothin' more nor less than the natural feelin's of a single gentleman that finds himself wid two grown daughters.'"

It was characteristic of Milbanke that he did not smile. He recognised only one fact in the old servant's words--the fact that the state of affairs over which he had been worrying in lonely perplexity had suddenly been accurately, if roughly, voiced by some one else. He glanced up with quick relief into the round, red face framed in the dairy window.

"Hannah," he said honestly, "your surmise was perfectly correct."

For the first time a smile broke over her tear-stained face.

"I was right thin? 'Tis the children was troublin' you?"

A sharp gleam of inquiry shot from her eyes.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"An' why, now?" Again her tone changed, the irrepressible undercurrent of native humour, native inquisitiveness and familiarity welling out unconsciously. "Sure, they're good children."

"I do not doubt it. I do not doubt it for one moment."

"But they're troublin' you all the same?"

"Well, yes. Yes, I confess they are troubling me."

"Both of thim?" she asked innocently.

He hesitated.

"Well, no," he replied artlessly. "No, not both of them."

"Ah, I thought that same!" Hannah gave a nod of understanding. "Sure, 'twas to be tormentin' men she was brought into the world for. I said so meself the first day I took her into me arms."

"But--but I haven't said anything. How do you know that it is----?"

"How do I know that it's Miss Clodagh that's botherin' you? Sure, how do I know that you're standin' before me? Faith, by the use of me eyesight! Haven't I seen you lookin' at her and ponderin'--and lookin'

at her agin?"

Milbanke's lips tightened, and he drew himself up.

"I should be sorry if any thought I have bestowed on your young mistress----" he began coldly; then suddenly the intense need of help and sympathetic counsel over-balanced dignity. "Hannah," he said abruptly, "I'm in a terribly awkward position, and that is the simple truth. My mind is quite at rest about the younger girl. She is a child--and will be a child for years. A good school is all she needs.

But with the other it's different--with Clodagh it's different. Clodagh is no longer a child."

Hannah remained discreetly silent.

"If I had a sister," he went on, "or any friend to whom I could entrust her. But I have none."

Again Hannah shook her head.

"Why, thin, that's a pity!" she murmured. "Sure, 'tis lonesome for a gintleman to be by himself."

"It is a pity--a great pity. You do not know how it is weighing upon me. Of course, there is her aunt----"

Hannah made an exclamation of horror.

"Is it Mrs. Laurence?" she cried. "Is it tie her to Mrs. Laurence you would? Sure, you may as well put her in the grave and be done wid it."

Milbanke's hara.s.sed face grew more perplexed.

"No," he said hurriedly--"no; I understand that that arrangement is impossible. I was merely wondering whether there is any other--any more distant relative with whom she might be happy----"

He looked anxiously into her broad, shrewd face.

For a moment the small eyes met his seriously, then involuntarily they twinkled.

"Faith, when I was a young woman, sir," she said slowly, "men wasn't so sat on findin' relations for a girl like Miss Clodagh--unless maybe 'twas a relation of their own makin'!"

Milbanke suddenly looked away.

"What--what do you mean?" he asked confusedly.

"Why, that 'tisn't aunts and cousins that a girl like Miss Clodagh wants, but a good husband."

"A--a husband?"

"Why, thin, what else? Instid of throublin' yourself and frettin'

yourself till your heart is scalded out of you, why don't you marry her?

That's what _I've_ been askin' meself ever since the poor masther died.

It's out now, if I'm to be killed for it!"

She eyed him almost defiantly.

But Milbanke stood stammering and confused, his gaze fixed nervously on the ground, an unaccustomed flush on his worn cheeks.

"But--but, Hannah, I--I am an old man!"

His tone was deprecating and meant to be ironic; but unconsciously it had an undernote of question; unconsciously, as he raised his eyes to his mentor's face, he straightened the shoulders that age and study had combined to bend.

"I am an old man!" he said again. "Why--why, I am five years older than her father----"