twenty—but just read it and see what you think.”

He lit another cigarette whilst Hennessey, putting on his glasses and pushing his dessert plate away, spread the will on the table.

Pinckney watched him as he read it. Hennessey was a new order of being to him. This easy-going, slipshod, garrulous gentleman, fond of his glass of wine, contrasted strangely with the typical lawyer of the States. Flushed and not in his business mood, the man of law cast his eyes over the document before him, reading bits of it here and there and seeming not inclined to bother himself by a concentration of his full energies on the matter.

Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph which he re-read as though puzzled by the meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over his glasses.

“Why, what’s this?” said he. “He has made you Phyl’s guardian. You!”

Pinckney laughed.

“Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me over. He has made me her guardian, till she’s twenty, and he made me promise to look after her interests and see to all business arrangements. He said he had no near relations in Ireland, and he said that he’d sooner trust the devil than the few relatives he had, that they were Papists—that is to say Roman Catholics—he seemed to fear them like the deuce and their influence on the girl. I couldn’t understand him. I’ve never seen any harm in Roman Catholics; there are loads in the States and they seem to be just as good citizens as the others, better, for they seem to stick tighter by their religion. Anyhow, there you are. Berknowles had them on the brain and nothing would do him but I must come over to look after the business myself.”

Hennessey, with his finger on the will, had been staring at Pinckney during this. He looked down now at the document and then up again.

“But you—her guardian—why, it’s absurd,” said he. “You aren’t old enough to be a guardian, why, Lord bless my soul, what’ll people be doing next? A young chap like you to be the guardian of a girl like Phyl—why, it’s not proper.”

“Not only am I to be her guardian,” said Pinckney with a twinkle in his eyes, “but she’s to come and live under my roof at Charleston. I promised Berknowles that—He was dying, you see, and one can refuse nothing to a dying man.”

Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard, poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” said Pinckney, tapping the ash off his cigarette. “All the same, you need not be worried at the impropriety of the business; there’s none, nothing improper could live in the same house with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs to her though I live there.”

“Vernons,” put in the other. “What’s that?”

“It’s the name of our house in Charleston. It’s mine, really, but my father left it to Maria to live in; it comes to me at her death. I don’t want that house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but it’s such a pleasant old place, I like to live there instead of buying a house of my own. Vernons isn’t exactly a house, it’s more like a family tree—hollow—with all the ancestors inside instead of hanging on the branches.”

“But why on earth didn’t Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?” asked Hennessey. “There’d have been some sense in that—a middle-aged woman—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Pinckney, “my aunt is not a middle-aged woman, she’s not fifteen.”

“Not what?” said Hennessey.

“Not fifteen—in years of discretion, though she’s over seventy as time goes. She has no knowledge at all of what money is or what money means—she flings it away, doesn’t spend it—just flings it away on anything and everything but herself. I don’t believe there’s a charity in the States that hasn’t squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that hasn’t banked on her. She was sent into the world to grow flowers and look after stray dogs and be robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy years at it and she doesn’t know she has ever been robbed. She’s not a fool by any manner of means, and she rules the servants at Vernons in the good old patriarchal way, but she’s lost where money is concerned. That’s why Berknowles wanted me to look after the girl’s interests. As for anything else, I guess Maria Pinckney will be the real guardian.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Hennessey. He was confused by all these new ideas shot into his mind suddenly like this after dinner, he could see that Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated him to think that Philip Berknowles should have chosen a youth like this to be second father to Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey? Hadn’t he a fine house in Merrion Square and a wife who would have treated the girl like a daughter?

“Well, I don’t know,” said he. “It’s not for me to dispute the wishes of a client, but I’ve known Phyl since she was born and I’ve known her father since we were together at Trinity College and I’d have taken it more handsome if he’d left the looking after of her to me.”

“I wonder he didn’t,” said Pinckney. “He spoke of you a good deal to me, spoke of you as his best friend; all the same he seemed set on the idea of us taking care of the girl. He fell in love with Charleston and he cottoned to us; then, of course, there were the family reasons. Phyl’s mother was a Mascarene; my mother was her mother’s first cousin. Vernons belonged to the Mascarenes, my mother brought it to my father as part of her wedding portion. The Pinckneys’ old house was lost to us in the smash up after the war. So, you see, Phyl ought to be as much at home at Vernons as I am. Funny, isn’t it, how things get mixed up and old family houses change hands?”

“And when do you want to take her away?” asked Hennessey.

“Upon my word, I’ve never thought of that,” replied the other. “I want to see things settled up here and to go over the accounts with you. Berknowles said the house had better be let—I should think it would be easy to find a good tenant—then I want to go to London on business and get back as quick as possible. She need not come back with me, it would scarcely give her time to get things ready. There’s a Mrs. Van Dusen, a friend of ours who lives in New York, she’s coming over in a month or so and Phyl might come with her as far as New York. It’s all plain sailing after that.”

“Well,” said Hennessey, folding up the will and putting it in his pocket. “I suppose it’s all for the best, but it’s hard lines for a man to lose his best friend and see a good old estate like Kilgobbin taken off to the States—Oh, you needn’t tell me, if Phyl goes out there she’s done for as far as Ireland is concerned. Sure, they never come back, the people that go there, and if she does come back it’ll be with an American husband and he master of Kilgobbin. I know what America is, it never lets go of the man or woman it catches hold of.”

“You’re not far wrong there,” said Pinckney. “You see, life is set to a faster pace in America than over here and once you learn to step that pace you feel coming back here as if you were living in a country where people are hobbled. At least that’s my experience. Then the air is different. There’s somehow a feeling of morning in America that goes through the whole day—almost—here, afternoon begins somewhere about eleven.”

Hennessey yawned, and the two men, rising from the table, left the room and crossed the hall to the library.

Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other good