Paddy-The-Next-Best-Thing

Paddy lay on the drawing-room sofa at the Parsonage and watched the birds skimming over the loch with a strained, anxious expression in her usually laughing eyes. Her aunts had...

There was one spot on the mountains near The Ghan House where, if you climbed high enough and were not afraid of an almost perpendicular path, you could get a glorious view, not...

Christmas Day broke clear and frosty—the last Christmas Day of the old order. Everyone woke up with an oppressed feeling and a vague wish that for just this once the season of m...

When Paddy got back to London, her mother, and Eileen, and the doctor, and even Basil thought she was changed in some way, but they did not know how. She was quieter than she us...

A spell of beautiful autumn weather brought Lawrence often to the beach as of old to get his boat, but Kathleen and Doreen no longer accompanied him. They were not asked, and ha...

Paddy Adair, the “next-best-thing,” as she was fond of calling herself, and the reason for which will appear hereafter, sat at the table, and spread all around her were little s...

On asking for Miss Adair he was ushered in and led to the dingy, old-fashioned drawing-room. It was some time before a step approached, and then the doctor, with a keen look in...

Paddy bowed very stiffly, but as Gwen promptly held out her hand, she was obliged to take it. She managed, however, to avoid doing likewise with Lawrence. Gwen pretended not to...

The few weeks to Christmas passed uneventfully. The Blakes came to London and Lawrence joined them, and they all seemed to slip back into their old groove for the time being. Pa...

The shadow upon the Parsonage had become actual distress—deep, poignant, all-absorbing distress. The two little ladies still looked mutely at each other, while this thing that h...

“I rather think Paddy will surprise them to-night,” she remarked. “They’ll be coming round and asking her where her snub nose and sallow skin are. I shall say, ‘They are still t...

When the others broke down under the strain, she was strong still; strong and calm, as she felt he would have been had he been in her place. She knew it was the last thing she c...

“That fellow Lawrence is off again—going back to India to kill a few more tigers—never knew such a chap—can’t stay quiet scarcely a month—pity he doesn’t look after his estate a...

The fountain had a little tinkling, singing sound, and there was a delicious odour of flowers, which mingled entrancingly with the shaded lights and graceful bending ferns. Eile...

True to her word, Gwen called for Doreen a few days later, and the two drove in a taxi to Shepherd’s Bush and found their way to the surgery, where Paddy, in a large black apron...

Paddy was out on the platform in half a twinkling, and with a little cry of “Jack!” darted to meet him with hands outstretched. Jack caught hold of both, and shook them until sh...

Ted threw his head back and shouted with laughter, exclaiming, “That’s the best of all, and I quite agree with you!” Then they ran up against the landing-stage, and he hurried h...

As the date fixed for the great dance drew near, no other topic of conversation was of any real interest. Even the two little ladies at the Parsonage got quite excited over it,...

He had been sitting most of the morning in his den, with the London newspapers, the lovers having all taken themselves off, with an air that forbade any one to follow on their p...

A few days later came the great picnic up the mountain. The Blakes gave the picnic, and the guests numbered about seventy, half of them proceeding to the climbing-place upon bic...

Basil flushed and bit his lip. Things had been going so easily and pleasantly with him for years, that it was extremely trying to have these pointed remarks hurled at his head.

Lawrence Blake found Calcutta even more to his liking than he expected. When he left England what conscience he possessed pricked him rather severely, but when he reached India...

In all the neighbourhood of the Mourne Mountains there was probably neither priest, nor peasant, nor layman so generally known and respected as the Rev. Patrick O’Hara’s two mai...

“It’s just this way, aunties,” he explained. “Somehow, while you and father made me feel you only wanted me to stay at home with you, I was too easy-going and happy to care abou...

For several paces after the encounter at Warrenpoint, neither Jack nor Eileen spoke, and though he tried hard to see her face, she kept it resolutely turned from him toward the...

It was to a small luncheon party, given especially for the three pairs of lovers at Mourne Lodge, that Eileen and Paddy and Jack set out that bright, crisp morning. Gwen and her...

When the music for the first dance commenced, General Adair led out Mrs Blake, and almost simultaneously Kathleen and Doreen with their partners, and Lawrence with Eileen follow...

For several days Lawrence had only a flying interview with Gwen, so occupied was she with balls and receptions and gayeties of all kinds, and meanwhile he still pondered the que...

It was the early January twilight the day before they left that Jack and Paddy went round to take their last farewells. They slipped out quietly and went alone on purpose, as ne...

When she entered the library Earl Selloyd had hastened to meet her with exaggerated courtesy, and dragged forward a big arm-chair, begging her to be seated. Gwen poised herself...

When Paddy was alone in her room her anger quickly evaporated, and was as quickly replaced by an overpowering sense of loneliness. Why, oh why, had they let her come to London a...

At meal times Jack was nearly always gloomy and preoccupied, or if he was gay his merriment was evidently forced. Between meals he went for long, lonely tramps, and constantly t...

It would be difficult to say when the awakening first came to Lawrence. Before it came he felt it growing every day. After it came, it seemed to have been there all along. At fi...

They thought her a little strange at home that evening, but after a time Jack and Eileen vanished, and making a tremendous effort, she contrived to chatter to the aunties about...

It was not until March, when Paddy had been in London over two months, that her mother and Eileen joined her. By that time she and the doctor had the furniture all in place and...

“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 leaka...

“Let me introduce my friends to you,” he said. “This is Pat O’Connor, of your own proud nationality, known as the lady-killer of Middlesex Hospital, and this is his brother, Cap...

Meanwhile in a very ruffled frame of mind, not only because Jack had kept her waiting half an hour, but also because she knew he had gone off quite contentedly up the mountain t...

Paddy sat on the morning-room table swinging her feet, and Jack leaned against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets, biting at the end of an empty pipe fitfully, as was...

One of the first things Paddy did when she got to London was to quarrel with her cousin, Basil Adair. Basil was a medical student, a young man who had somehow got a notion that...

It was not until the second week in August that Paddy was able to start on her summer holiday, and then she journeyed to Omeath to pay her long-counted-on visit to the Parsonage.

Doreen was now fidgeting nervously, glancing constantly at the clock, and at last she decided to tell her mother exactly what had passed. Almost before she had finished, Mrs Bla...

While Paddy and Jack were sitting on the table a week previously, swinging their feet and discussing the news of the Blakes’ home-coming, just brought by Aunt Mary and Aunt Jane...

A week passed, and no message of any sort reached Paddy, so that, finally, in desperation she rang up Gwen on the telephone to ask for news. Gwen’s voice sounded a little cold a...

“I don’t know. It happened three days ago, and he was taken to a hospital, but father had him brought in an ambulance to our house to-day. Surely you are not going to refuse to...

If she had tried she could not have analysed her feelings just then. She was only conscious that in some way the photograph was a shock to her. Though she had scarcely confessed...