Variable Winds at Jalna. Mazo de la Roche

And the house! Those curtains are new, aren’t they?”

      “Yes. Fancy your noticing…. Are you hungry, dear?”

      “No. I’m much too hot. I’d forgotten how hot it can be.”

      “Your tweeds are so heavy. Do take your jacket off. I’ll make you a cold drink.”

      Piers came in. He gave Pheasant a quick glance as though begging her not to fuss over the boy the moment he arrived. Little Mary came in. She was eating an ice cream cone.

      “Where did you get that?” demanded Piers.

      “Philip gave it to me. He has one himself.”

      “Hello, little sister,” said Maurice. “Will you come and kiss me?”

      She turned and fled.

      “She’s shy,” said Piers. “She’ll get over it and be as bold as brass — the way they all are.”

      “She’s pretty,” said Maurice, but without enthusiasm. He thought they might well have done without this last addition to the family.

      Pheasant now brought iced drinks on a small tray.

      “What is it?” asked Maurice.

      “Ginger ale.”

      “Oh.”

      “Don’t you like it?”

      “Yes, indeed…. But — might I have a drop of whisky in mine? The plane flight has left me a bit squeamish.”

      “Certainly,” said Piers, feeling ready for a drink himself. He went to a cupboard and brought out a bottle of Canadian rye.

      Maurice looked at the label.

      “I haven’t any Irish,” said Piers, “if that’s what you want.”

      “No, no. This is fine, thanks.”

      “Take a mouthful from the glass to make room for the whisky.” Maurice drank half the glass.

      “Say when,” said Piers, looking rather hard at his son.

      “You may fill it up.” Maurice gave a little laugh. “As I said — I feel a bit squeamish.”

      Piers filled the glass. He beamed at Maurice.

      “I do think he is thinner, don’t you, Piers?” Pheasant asked. She was longing to stroke her boy’s hair.

      “It’s a wonder,” said Piers, “he isn’t getting fat and lazy. What do you do with yourself, Maurice? I mean, how do you pass the time?”

      “Oh, the time passes fast enough.”

      “It’s a wonderful thing,” Piers went on, “for a young fellow to have an independent fortune. It was lucky for you that you went to visit Cousin Dermot.”

      “Yes, indeed. Where is Nook? Have I got to call him Christian now?”

      “You’ve got to try. I find it hard.”

      “I’m quite used to it,” said Pheasant, “except that at bedtime I always say ‘Goodnight, Nooky.’”

      “Listen to her,” laughed Piers. “She still looks on you boys as though you were five-year-olds.”

      Little Mary again came in, sidled between Piers’s knees and stared large-eyed at Maurice.

      “Whom do you think she’s like?” asked Pheasant, smiling encouragement at her daughter.

      “Certainly not you,” said Maurice. “More like Father.”

      “No,” said Piers. “Like my mother. She’s named for her, you know. Tell brother your name, pet.”

      Little Mary, in panic, scrambled on to his knees and hid her face against him. She did not mind the heat from his stalwart body.

      “Wait till you see Philip,” said Pheasant. “He’s grown devastatingly handsome in the past two years.”

      “He’ll outgrow that,” said Piers. “I was the same at his age.”

      Pheasant was silent.

      “Wasn’t I?” he repeated.

      “Why, yes, dear.” She spoke in a comforting tone. Then to the little girl she said, “Run to the studio and tell Christian that big brother is here.”

      Mary gripped Piers and hid her face. Setting her on her feet, he said in a tone of command, “Run along with you.”

      All three elders watched her go — Pheasant, loving yet critical; Piers, tender yet stern; Maurice, detached and a little impatient.

      Mary went out through the kitchen door and across the yard to the studio. She could see Christian there, scraping paint from a palette. The room looked very large, Christian very forbidding in his smock; the smell of the paint was sinister. She stood looking in through the crack of the door and a tear ran down her cheek. The world so large, so full of strange scents and sounds! So many men — and another one come. She could hear Philip’s piercing sweet whistle as he crossed the yard. He strode past her without seeing her and went into the studio.

      “Do you know what?” he said, in his new man’s voice. “Maurice is here. In the house with Mother and Dad. I saw him through the window.”

      Christian gave an exclamation of surprise, began to pull off his smock, decided to leave it on, and the two passed Mary on their way back to the house. She had not given Christian the message. She had not done as she was told. Tears ran down her cheeks and she scratched a mosquito bite on the back of her neck.

      Indoors the three brothers stared at each other, trying to recapture the old familiarity. The two younger always had been together. Maurice was the outsider. They felt that he now considered himself superior to them — in experience of life, in travel, in his position as a young man of means. Philip frankly looked up to him, even while he was inclined to show off in front of him, as a citizen of a young, uninhibited, flagrantly rich country.

      “And how is poor ould Ireland?” he asked.

      “Fine,” smiled Maurice. He was in good spirits now. He looked Philip over admiringly.

      “I hope you’re not homesick for the ould sod,” Philip said, eyeing Maurice’s clothes with envy.

      Christian put in, “Don’t mind Philip. It’s just his idea of wit.”

      Pheasant said, “It’s wonderful having Mooey home with us, isn’t it, boys?”

      “Splendid,” agreed Piers, wanting to be included. “Where is that little Mary?” he added.

      The boys said they had not seen her.

      “I’d better find her.” Piers rose and went with his slight limp toward the door. “Sometimes she has a little cry all by herself.”

      “He just dotes on her,” Pheasant said to her sons when they were alone.

      “It used to be me,” said Philip, “till she came.”

      In the two years that had passed since Maurice had last seen his brothers Christian had developed mentally more than had Philip. Those two had been the comrades, whispering and laughing together. But now Christian no longer found Philip adequate but reached out toward Maurice. In an odd way he felt himself to be richer in experience than his elder because of his dedication to art. He looked on Maurice as a dilettante in life and himself as an ardent worker. Yet he envied Maurice his experience in travel. They had had a few talks in Maurice’s last visit from Ireland which he could not forget. He wanted to place himself again on that footing with his brother — yes, and to leave the lighthearted scatterbrained Philip outside.

      At the first opportunity when, in the cool of the evening, they were alone together in the studio Christian brought the talk round to Adeline and her lover. Maurice had been very nice about the pictures,