“Why not?” setting his mouth squarely, with an obstinate expression. “Well, you know a lot of the people about here think they’re engaged.” “And if they do—isn’t it a thundering good thing they’re wrong?” “No, it isn’t,” getting nettled. “If Lawrence has been trifling with Eileen I’ll kill him.” “Eileen has too much sense to care for a man who would behave so.” “You don’t know anything about it. You’re just a great, big, blundering baby,” and Paddy looked as if she were on the point of tears. “Whew!” whistled Jack. “What have I been doing now?” “Nothing, and that’s just it.—If I were a man—if I were Eileen’s brother, I’d shoot Lawrence. She hasn’t got a brother, but you’re the next best thing and you ought to do it.” “I fail to see how I could benefit Eileen by getting myself hanged.” “I don’t care,” exclaimed Paddy. “I don’t care for any of you. I’ll have it out with Lawrence some day, and make him pay for this.” “My dear child! you’re making no end of a fuss about nothing,” sententiously. “Child!” echoed Paddy derisively. “And I should like to know what you’ve ever done to prove yourself a man.” Jack was so astonished, for a moment he could hardly speak. In all their lives he had never known Paddy adopt that tone to him, and he regarded her as if she had suddenly developed into a new species of wild animal. “Oh, you needn’t look like that,” ran on poor Paddy, getting more and more beside herself with exasperation; “you know perfectly well you are little better than a mere boy. If you had gone out into the world like other men, and made a way for yourself, you might have come back and won Eileen, and saved her from all that’s coming. And instead, you have just sat still and stared at her, and let another man come in and spoil everything!—and you call that loving! If you’d any possible chance of providing a home in a year or two, you might be able to do something even now, but there you sit a mere boy at twenty-five years, and nothing achieved except a good aim and a good yachtsman.” Jack was struck dumb. For a moment they both forgot that Paddy herself had been one of the principal supporters in his idleness—each in his own way saw only his pain. He got down from the gate slowly. “Good Lord, Paddy!” he said, “I believe you’re right,” and without stopping or looking back, he strode off across the garden toward the mountains with his forehead wrinkled into two perpendicular lines. Paddy watched him a moment, and then rushed away to a lovely little cove by the shore, and throwing herself down on a bank burst into tears. She did not quite know what she was crying about, but when she finally sat up and dried her eyes she felt better, and was able to review the situation more calmly. “Perhaps, after all, Lawrence would soon be back,” she argued, “and she was making a great fuss needlessly. Or perhaps Eileen did not care so much as she imagined, and things would all come right yet.”