Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/74

 then up the back stairs, then along the upper hall, and down the front stairs, back through the dining-room and the kitchen again, and once more up the back stairs. How long this undignified pursuit might have lasted it would be no easy matter to say, for agile as was the Preacher, Gilead could always skip up the stairs after him more nimbly, even taking time for an occasional butt or two as he went.

Then, in an inspired moment, Lena, the Swedish girl, slammed the door between her master, and his pursuer. And there was Gilead, safe and sound, a prisoner in the Preacher's dining-room, where, recovering his composure, he made away with the table-fern and was leisurely nibbling at Mrs. Sampson's window plants, when Lionel Clarence was hurriedly dispatched for the new O'Malley boy, who, it was claimed, was the rightful owner of the trespasser.

Lonely appeared, solemn-eyed, pensive-looking, with one shoulder hunched up. He led Gilead ingloriously forth by means of the chin-whisker, and in the back yard belabored him—where the hair was long and thick—until even the Preacher turned away and