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It was the Derelict, Benella Dusenberry, clothed in maid's apparel, and looking, notwithstanding that disguise, like a New England schoolma'am. She was delighted to see us, scanned every detail of Francesca's travelling costume with the frankest admiration, and would have allowed us to carry our wraps and umbrellas upstairs if she had not been reminded by Salemina.
It was eight o'clock when Benella mounted the seat beside Salemina, and gave the donkey a preliminary touch of the stick. "Be aisy wid him," cautioned Peter. "He's a very arch donkey for a lady to be dhrivin', and mebbe he'd lay down and not get up for you." "Arrah! shut yer mouth, Pether.
When the inside-car passed out of view with us, it appears that Benella wept tears of rage, at the sight of which Oonah and Molly trembled. In that moment of despair and remorse, her mind worked as it must always have done before the Salem priestess befogged it with hazy philosophies, understood neither by teacher nor by pupil. Peter had come back, but could suggest nothing.
I left her to her thoughts, which I well knew were more precious than my words, and went across the hall, where Benella was packing Francesca's last purchases. Ordinarily one of us manages to superintend such operations, as the Derelict's principal aim is to make two garments go where only one went before.
She brought footstools for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing my paint brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and offered to be the one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for that surgical operation should ever come.
"I am going to be in the vanguard of the next house-hunting expedition; in fact, I have almost made up my mind to take my third of Benella and be an independent householder for a time. If I am ever to learn the management of an establishment before beginning to experiment on Ronald's, now is the proper moment."
She is evidently an Irish gentlewoman of very small means, very flexible in her views and convictions, very talkative and amusing, and very much impressed with Benella as a product of New England institutions. We all took a fancy to one another at first sight, and we heard with real pleasure that her son's wife lived only a few miles away.
Sometimes it is a penny-dreadful, as when you deliberately leave your luggage on an express train going south, enter another standing upon a side track, and embark for an unknown destination. I watched you from an upper window of the Junction Hotel, but could not leave Benella to argue with you.
We have been here five days, and instead of reproving Benella, as we intended, for gross assumption of authority in the matter, we are more than ever her bond-slaves. The place is altogether charming, and here it is for you. Knockcool Street is Knockcool village itself, as with almost all Irish towns; but the line of little thatched cabins is brightened at the far end by the neat house of Mrs.
It was the small stove in the kitchen that kindled Francesca's imagination, and she made up her mind instantly to become a householder on her own account. I tried to dissuade her; but she is as firm as the Rock of Cashel when once she has set her heart upon anything. "I shall be almost your next-door neighbour, Penelope," she coaxed, "and of course you will give me Benella.
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