“Roll into it, Mr. Rolypoly,” she answered
cheerily as she entered.
“Of course I’m not the star boarder—nothing
for me!” he said in affected protest.
“A little more to starboard and you’ll
get it on,” she retorted with a glint of her
late father’s raillery, and she gave the coat
a twitch which put it right on the ample shoulders.
“Bully! bully!” he cried. “I’ll
give you the tip for the Askatoon cup.”
“I’m a Christian. I hate horse-racers
and gamblers,” she returned mockingly.
“I’ll turn Christian—I want
to be loved,” he bleated from the doorway.
“Roll on, proud porpoise!” she rejoined,
which shows that her conversation was not quite aristocratic
at all times.
“Golly, but she’s a gold dollar in a gold
bank,” remarked Jesse Bulrush warmly as he lurched
into the street.
The girl stood still in the middle of the room looking
dreamily down the way the two men had gone.
The quiet of the late summer day surrounded her.
She heard the dizzy din of the bees, the sleepy grinding
of the grass hoppers, the sough of the solitary pine
at the door, and then behind them all a whizzing, machine-like
sound. This particular sound went on and on.
She opened the door of the next room. Her mother
sat at a sewing-machine intent upon some work, the
needle eating up a spreading piece of cloth.
“What are you making, mother?” Kitty asked.
“New blinds for Mr. Kerry’s bedroom-he
likes this green colour,” the widow added with
a slight flush, due to leaning over the sewing-machine,
no doubt.
“Everybody does everything for him,” remarked
the girl almost pettishly.
“That’s a nice spirit, I must say!”
replied her mother reprovingly, the machine almost
stopping.
“If I said it in a different way it would be
all right,” the other returned with a smile,
and she repeated the words with a winning soft inflection,
like a born actress.
“Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!”
declared her mother, and she bent smiling over the
machine, which presently buzzed on its devouring way.
Three people had said the same thing within a few
minutes. A look of pleasure stole over the girl’s
face, and her bosom rose and fell with a happy sigh.
Somehow it was quite a wonderful day for her.
CLOSING THE DOORS
There are many people who, in some subtle psychological
way, are very like their names; as though some one
had whispered to “the parents of this child”
the name designed for it from the beginning of time.
So it was with Shiel Crozier. Does not the
name suggest a man lean and flat, sinewy, angular
and isolated like a figure in one of El Greco’s
pictures in the Prado at Madrid? Does not the
name suggest a figure of elongated humanity with a
touch of ancient mysticism and yet also of the fantastical
humour of Don Quixote?
