Light O' the Morning: The Story of an Irish Girl, L. T. Meade [drm ebook reader txt] 📗

“That's it, child. That's the first cheery word I have heard for the last six weeks—too awful I should think it is. They are smothering me between them, Nora. I shall never get up and breathe the free air again; but when you came in you brought a breath of air with you.”

“Let's open the window. There's a gale coming up, We'll have some air,” said Nora.

“Why, then, Light o' the Morning, they say I'll get bronchitis if the window is opened.”

“They! Who are they?” said Nora, with scorn.

“Why, you wouldn't believe it, but they had a doctor down from Dublin to see me. I don't believe he had a scrap of real Irish blood in him, for he said I was to be nursed and messed over, and gruels and all kinds of things brought to my bedside—I who would have liked a fine potato with a pinch of salt better than anything under the sun.”

“You'll have your potato and your pinch of salt now that I am back,” said Nora. “I mean to be mistress of this room.”

The Squire gave a laugh.

“Isn't it lovely to hear her?” he said. “Don't it do me a sight of good? There, open the window wide, Nora, before your mother comes in. Oh, your mother is as pleased as Punch, and for her sake I'd bear a good deal; but I am a changed man. The old times are gone, never to return. Call this place Castle O'Shanaghgan. It may be suitable for an English nobleman to live in, but it's not my style; it's not fit for an Irish squire. We are free over here, and we don't go in for luxuries and smotherations.”

“Ah, father, I had to go through a great deal of that in England,” said Nora. “It's awful to think that sort of life has come here; but there—there's the window wide open. Do you feel a bit of a breeze, dad?”

“To be sure I do; let me breathe it in. Prop me up in bed, Nora. They said I was to lie flat on my back, but, bedad! I won't now that you have come back.”

Nora pushed some pillows under her father, and sat behind him to support him, and at last she got him to sit up in bed with his face turned to the wide-open window.

The blinds were rattling, the curtains were being blown into the room, and the soft, wild sound of the sea fell on his ears.

“Ah, I'm better now,” he said; “my lungs are cleared at bit. You had best shut the window before your lady-mother comes in. And put the candle so that I can't see the fal-lals too much,” he continued; “but place it so that I can gaze at your bonny face.”

“You must tell me how you were hurt, father, and where.”

“Bedad! then, I won't—not to-night. I want to have everything as cheerful as possible to-night. My little girl has come back—the joy of my heart, the light of my eyes, the top of the morning, and I'm not going to fret about anything else.”

“You needn't—you needn't,” said Nora. “Oh! it is good to see you again. There never was anybody like you in all the world. And you were longing for Nora?”

“Now, don't you be fishing.”

“But you were—wern't you?”

“To be sure—to be sure. Here, then, let me grip hold of your little hand. I never saw such a tiny little paw. And so they haven't made a fine English lady of you?”

“No, not they,” said Nora.

“And you ran away to see your old dad? Why, then, you have the spirit of the old O'Shanaghgans in you.”

“Horses would not have kept me from you,” said Nora.

“I might have known as much. How I laughed when your mother brought in the telegram from your Aunt Grace this morning! And weren't they in a fuss, and wasn't your Uncle George as cross as he could be, and your mother rampaging up and down the room until I said, 'If you want to bring on the fever, you'll go on like that, Ellen; and then she went out, and I heard her talking to your uncle in the passage. Clap, clap went their tongues. I never knew anything like English people; they never talk a grain of anything amusing; that's the worst of it. Why, it's the truth I'm telling you, darling; I haven't had a hearty laugh since you left home. I'll do fine now. When they were out of the room didn't I give way! I gave two loud guffaws, that I did, when I thought of the trick you had played them. Ah, you're a true daughter of the old race!”

Nora nestled up to her father, squeezing his hand now and then, and looking into his face.

“We'll have a fine time to-morrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next,” she said. “Oh! I am determined to be near you. But isn't there one little place in the house left bare, father, where we can go and have a happy moment?”

“Never a square inch,” said the Squire, looking at her solemnly. “It's too awful; even the attics have been cleared out and put in order, for the servants, forsooth! says your Uncle George.”

“What do we want so many retainers for? I am sure, now, if they would take a good houseful of some of the poor villagers and plant them up in those attics, there would be some sense in it.”

“Oh, Nora, couldn't we get a bit of a place just like the old place, all to ourselves?”

“I'll think it over,” said Nora; “we'll manage somehow. We can't stand feather-beds for ever and ever, father.”

“Hark to her,” said the Squire; “you're a girl after my own heart, Light o' the Morning, and it's glad I am to see you, and to have you back again.”