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<h3>Chapter Thirty Two.</h3> <h4>Conclusion.</h4> The news of Captain Victor’s engagement and long attachment to the charming Miss O’Shaughnessy caused the greatest interest and excitement among the guests at the cottage, while his old friends rejoiced to see the happy brightness on his face. “Welcome home, Dick!” Mr Wallace cried, shaking him warmly by the hand. “Thankful to see you back again, instead of that other fellow who has been moping about in your clothes!” and Pixie commented on the announcement with her usual outspoken honesty. “I told ye it would come all right! I suppose it was you Bridgie was fretting about, when I thought it was the bills! She’s got dips in her cheeks, only you can’t see them now, because she’s blushing. I’m glad you are coming into the family, but I don’t see how you can ever be married! She can’t be spared!” The Captain laughed at that statement, and vowed that she would have to be spared, and that at an early date; but a shadow fell across Bridgie’s face, and as they sat alone in the garden she said anxiously— “I am afraid I have been selfish, Dick! I can think of nothing but you, but, after all, Pixie was quite right—I can’t possibly be spared for a long time to come. She won’t be old enough to take charge of a house for three years at the soonest, and Jack has been so good and unselfish that I couldn’t possibly leave him in the lurch. You have waited so long that you won’t mind waiting a few years longer, will you?” “It doesn’t seem to me a particularly logical conclusion, sweetheart!” the Captain said, smiling. “Personally I feel that I ought to be rewarded at once, but I won’t make any promises one way or another until I have met your brother and heard his views. Don’t worry yourself, you shan’t do anything that you feel to be wrong, but I don’t despair of finding a solution of the difficulty. When it is an alternative between that and waiting for you for three years, Bridgie, I shall be very, very resourceful!” “I don’t know what you can do. It’s no use suggesting a housekeeper—the boys would not hear of it, and she’d be destroyed in a week with the life they would lead her!” So argued Bridgie, but she was willing to be convinced, and too happy in the present to feel much concern for the future. The weight of depression which had lain on her heart despite her brave cheeriness of manner was lifted once and for ever now that she was convinced of Dick’s faithful love, and it seemed impossible that she could ever be more content than at this moment. Until now almost all the joys of her life had come from an unselfish pleasure in the good fortune of others, but this wonderful new happiness was her very own, hers and Dick’s, and she could hardly believe that it was true, and not a wonderful dream. Mrs Wallace’s letter had conveyed an invitation to stay for the night, so the lovers had two days to sit and talk together in the lovely summer garden before returning to give an account of themselves in Rutland Road. Jack was not prepared to see a stranger accompanying his sister, but he welcomed him with Irish heartiness, and guessed how the land lay at the first glance at Bridgie’s face. So did Pat; so did Miles; but they concealed their suspicions with admirable tact, and talked persistently through the evening meal with intent to relieve the embarrassment which was so evidently experienced by the hostess. Poor Bridgie was painfully conscious of the enormity of her conduct as she looked from one to the other of her three big brothers. Jack’s manner was nervous and excited. Poor fellow! he was evidently dreading the explanations which were in store. Pat was looking pale; he grew so fast that he needed constant care. Miles kept handing her the mustard with sympathetic effusion; he had a heart of gold and could be led with a word, but it must be the right word, and woe to the housekeeper of the future if she tried to rule by force! She smiled at him with wistful apology, and Miles patted her hand affectionately under the tablecloth. It was a pity when a sensible girl like Bridgie made an idiot of herself by falling in love, but they all seemed to do it sooner or later, and there was no use making a fuss, Master Miles told himself resignedly. She seemed to have met this Captain Victor years ago, and to have corresponded with him in India, but she had never mentioned his name at home. How strange to know that Bridgie had had an interest beyond her own brothers and sisters! Miles felt mildly aggrieved, but consoled himself by the reflection that the Captain seemed a decent sort of fellow with plenty to say for himself. He had been on active service twice already, and though he refused details of manslaughter, gave such a graphic account of tiger-shooting expeditions as made Miles’s lips water, and aroused rebellious repinings at his own hard lot in living in a miserable suburb where the only sport to be obtained was the tracking of a few superfluous cats! When dinner was over, the two boys discreetly lingered behind while their elders retired to the drawing-room, and Bridgie grew rosy red with embarrassment as the door closed behind them. “We wanted to tell you, Jack—” she began nervously. “I would have told you before, only there was nothing to tell. There isn’t now! At least, I mean, it won’t be for a long, long time, dear. Not until you don’t want me any more.” “Better let me try, Bridgie!” cried the Captain, laughing. He put his hand on her shoulder in a proudly possessive fashion, and looked Jack full in the face. “She is dreadfully afraid of what you will say, and ashamed of herself for daring to think of anything but her home duties. It doesn’t seem to strike her that she has a duty to me too, when I have been thinking of her for the last three years. I must explain to you, O’Shaughnessy, that a friend wrote to tell me that your eldest sister was about to be married to a man called Hilliard, and by an unfortunate coincidence Bridgie herself had vaguely referred to coming changes in her last letter, so I believed the report, and we have mutually been eating our hearts, and believing the other to be faithless. There was no engagement, you must understand, but I made up my mind about her the first day we met, and she now acknowledges that she ran away because she was afraid I might interfere with her home claims. You see, I have already spared her to you for three good years, so I think it is my turn now! My friends will tell you that I have been miserably dull and surly, and for their sakes alone I feel I ought to make a stand.” “And Bridgie has been always sweet and cheerful. We have each expected her to be sorry for us in turns, and never once suspected that she needed us to be sorry for her too. Thank you, Bridgie!” said Jack, looking across at her with a loving look which was the sweetest reward which she could possibly have received for the struggles which had been so gallantly concealed. “It was my greatest comfort to have you all to work and care for when I thought he had—forgotten!” she cried hastily. “And I have loved helping you, Jack! Please speak honestly, dear, let us all speak out honestly. Of course I want to be with Dick, but I want most of all to do what is right—we all do—and the children must come first. You can’t be left alone, Jack, and there is no one else to take my place.” “Unless—” began Jack slowly. Bridgie looked at him in surprise, and saw the red flush come creeping up from beneath his collar, touch his cheeks, and mount up and up to the roots of his curling hair. “Unless I married myself!” he said breathlessly, and at that Bridgie darted forward and caught him by both hands. “What? What? What? Jack, what do you mean? Is it Sylvia? Of course it is Sylvia! And does she—Jack, what does it mean? Are you engaged too? Have you been keeping it from me because you thought—” “We wouldn’t let you think you were in our way; we loved you too much, old girl, so we were quietly waiting until—” “I came along!” concluded Dick Victor tersely. The three young people stood staring at each other for a moment, and the tears brimmed over in Bridgie’s eyes, but presently she began to laugh, and the young men joined in with a sense of the happiest relief. Each one had been thinking of the other, and putting personal hopes in the background, and lo, in the simplest, most delightful of fashions, the knot was cut, and each was left free to be happy after his heart’s desire. “Oh, it’s perfectly, perfectly perfect!” Bridgie cried rapturously. “The boys adore Sylvia, and will be her devoted slaves; she is twice the housekeeper that I am, and she has been so lonely, poor darling, without her parents. Oh, Jack, how nice of you to care for her, and give her a home!” “That’s what she says!” replied Jack naïvely. “Shall we send for her to join the council? She ought to have her say. I’ll run across—” “No, no! Send Mary. I want to see her first—I want to see exactly how she looks when she knows she is found out,” Bridgie insisted; so Mary was promptly despatched on her errand, and back came Sylvia, wondering and excited, and not a little mystified by the presence of the tall stranger. “Master Jack has good taste!” said the Captain to himself as he looked at the dainty figure and erect little head with its crop of curls. “Rather an embarrassing position for the poor girl! Hope they break it to her gently!” But it was not the O’Shaughnessy custom to break news gently, or in a circuitous fashion, and the moment Sylvia entered the doorway, Bridgie flew at her with outstretched arms, crying incoherently, and with sublime disregard of grammar— “Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, I’m engaged! That’s him! It’s been a mistake all the time, and we are going to be married at once. We are all going to be married! Dick and me, and you and Jack, and you are coming here to look after the house! I thought I couldn’t be married because of Jack, and he thought he couldn’t be married because of me, and now it’s all right, and we can all be happy. I congratulate you, Sylvia! Congratulate me! I made Jack let me tell you, for I knew you would be so surprised. Don’t you feel too bewildered to take it in?” “I do!” replied Sylvia, with much truth. Red as a rose was she, at this sudden and public announcement of her engagement, not knowing where to look, or what to say, yet with a consciousness of immense happiness to come, and unfeigned delight at the happy ending to Bridgie’s love-story. Dick Victor came forward and introduced himself, and presently they all seated themselves, and tried to discuss the future in staid, responsible fashion. The Captain expected to be quartered in England for the immediate future, but could not of course be certain of his ultimate movements. He proposed that he and Bridgie should look out for a furnished house, so as to have a home of their own and yet be ready for such changes as might arise. Jack anxiously questioned Sylvia as to the responsibility which would be hers, and she professed herself only too ready to sister the two dear boys. “And Pixie—I should love to have Pixie!” she cried, whereat Bridgie frowned, and fidgeted restlessly on the sofa. “We will make definite arrangements later on,” she said. “Everything cannot be decided at once. The boys will be quite enough trouble for you, me dear! They are as good as gold, but they will grow, and their clothes wear out so fast, and since we came to town they’ve taken a distaste to patches, and they want money in their own pockets, the same as the other boys they meet. ‘If I give you some shillings just to jingle, and show they are there, will that satisfy you?’ I asked Pat only last week, and he laughed in my face! It’s hard to say ‘No’ when they smile at you, Sylvia, but you’ll have to do it.” “I—don’t—know!” said Sylvia slowly. The others looked at her questioningly, and she turned to Jack with a sparkling face. “I was waiting for a chance of telling you. Mr Nisbet telegraphed to Ceylon about father’s death, and I’ve had a letter from his lawyers. It came last night, and I’m rich, Jack! Isn’t it lovely?—really quite rich! The lawsuit was settled in his favour, and he was coming home to settle, and now everything comes to me. I can help with the boys, and some day, when you are ready, we can go back to Knock, and live in the old home again! I’ve been so happy since I heard, thinking that at last I could do something for you too. You are pleased about it, aren’t you, Jack? Do say you are pleased!” Jack’s beaming smile was the best answer to that question. “’Deed, I’m delighted!” he declared. “I’ll spend money with any man alive, and the more there is, the better I’m pleased. We will stay where we are and see the boys settled, and let Geoffrey enjoy his lease, and then we’ll go home, and I shall probably have some savings of my own to add to yours by that time, and not feel I am living on my wife. I’m thankful you have the money, and I’m thankful that I knew nothing of it before we were engaged.” “And so am I!” said Sylvia softly. A week later there was a second conference, at which every member of the family put in an appearance, and the question of the hour was, “Who shall have Pixie? Where shall Pixie have her home?” “I am the head of the family. It is the right thing that she should be with me. Sylvia and I would both like to have her, so it is unnecessary to discuss the point any further,” said Mr Jack, with an air. “I don’t wish to say anything in the least unkind to Sylvia—you know that, don’t you, dear?” cried Esmeralda the magnificent, sitting amidst billows of chiffon and lace, and smiling sweetly across the room. “But the fact remains that I am Pixie’s real sister, and she is not; and I think a sister’s claim comes before a brother’s. Bridgie will have no settled home, and I am at Knock. Anyone might see at a glance that her home ought to be with me, under the circumstances.” “I want Pixie!” said Bridgie softly. “I want Pixie!” And Pixie sat on the edge of the sofa, and looked from one to the other with bright, bird-like glances. Everyone wanted her, everyone had an argument to prove a prior claim; they were all arguing and struggling for the supreme happiness of welcoming her into their households. It was the happiest moment of her life. “It’s like Solomon and the babies!” she cried exultantly. “Ye’ll have to cut me in threes, and divide the pieces. Esmeralda shall have my head, for the times when she loses her own; Sylvia shall have my feet, because she limps herself; and,”—she looked across the room deep into Bridgie’s eyes—“Bridgie shall have my heart! It would be with her, anyway, wherever she went.” The tears brimmed over in Bridgie’s eyes; Esmeralda frowned quickly, then glanced at Geoffrey, as he stood by her side, and softened into a smile. Jack stifled a sigh, and said gravely— “Pixie has settled the question for herself. After that confession there can be no more to say. Take her, Bridgie, but be generous and spare her to us for part of the year. We all need you, Pixie—wise little head, willing little feet, loving little heart—every single bit of you. Come and help us as often as you can.” <h4>The End.</h4> <hr></div> <div class="navigation"> | Chapter 1 | | Chapter 2 | | Chapter 3 | | Chapter 4 | | Chapter 5 | | Chapter 6 | | Chapter 7 | | Chapter 8 | | Chapter 9 | | Chapter 10 | | Chapter 11 | | Chapter 12 | | Chapter 13 | | Chapter 14 | | Chapter 15 | | Chapter 16 | | Chapter 17 | | Chapter 18 | | Chapter 19 | | Chapter 20 | | Chapter 21 | | Chapter 22 | | Chapter 23 | | Chapter 24 | | Chapter 25 | | Chapter 26 | | Chapter 27 | | Chapter 28 | | Chapter 29 | | Chapter 30 | | Chapter 31 | | Chapter 32 | <hr></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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