Yet the very next morning he was again at Eileen’s side, again looking that unspoken homage into her eyes. It was the occasion of what was generally known as a Scrimmage Party at The Ghan House, to which he has been inveigled partly on false pretences. “Are you coming to my birthday party?” Paddy had shouted to him as he was riding past in the morning, from the top of a hen-house where she was busily endeavouring to mend leakages in the roof. He reined in his horse, and came as near as he could get. “What in the name of fortune are you doing up there?” “I’m fixing on a few odd slates to keep out the rain. Don’t you admire my handiwork?” “Why don’t you let your man do it? Lord!” with amusement, “I never saw such a position.” Paddy glanced at her somewhat generous display of ankle, and her feet trying to hang on to the roof. “To tell you the honest truth, Jack was supposed to be going to do it, while I handed up the slates, but we quarrelled.” “You seem to enjoy quarrelling with your friends beyond anything. I wonder you have any left.” Now that he had come near, he was in no violent hurry to go on, for Paddy, perched on her hen-house roof, had a roguish, dare-devil look that was distinctly alluring. “Oh! they come round again,” airily. “It would often be more fun if they didn’t. That’s why I like quarrelling with you. Your thunder-clouds last longer.” “Then in future I shall suppress them altogether.” “Not you. You wouldn’t know yourself amiable too long.” “Am I so very bad-tempered?” Paddy glanced up from her work. “You’re the most detestable person I know, as a rule,” she informed him. Lawrence could not help laughing, though she was evidently quite serious. “I suppose the few intervals when I bask in the sunlight of your favour, are when I buy pigs to oblige you, and that kind of thing! I shouldn’t have taken you for a time-server, Paddy—only liking people for what you can get out of them.” “Daddy was ill over the pigs,” she remarked, ignoring his thrust. “I told him while we were at tea, and he choked, and got dreadfully ill, because every time he was just calming down, he remembered about Dan’el on the floor, or about you having to buy my fifteen. I daren’t even mention such a thing as a pig in his hearing now. He isn’t strong enough for it. You see he hadn’t quite got over my charging into you when I was after that rat, and then making you carry the little beast of a ferret and join in,” and her eyes shone bewitchingly. “If you think I’m detestable, what do you suppose I think of you?” he asked. “Oh, no one thinks at all when it’s me,” with a funny little pursing up of her lips, and a sweeping disregard of grammar. “You see, I can’t be judged after any ordinary standard, as I’m not ordinary. I’m not a girl, and I’m not a boy—I’m Paddy—‘Paddy-the-next-best-thing.’” He laughed again. “Oh no! you’re not ordinary,” he agreed, “and I’m rather sorry there are not some more Paddys—I like the breed.”