14 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH
"Yes. She's beautiful, Daddy. I want to look at her all day." "She's lucky to have anything to look at," Fee said grimly. "Jack and Hughie got hold of the doll before poor Meggie had a chance to see it properly." "Well, boys will be boys. Is the damage bad?" "Nothing that can't be mended. Frank caught them before it went too far." "Frank? What was he doing down here? He was supposed to be at the forge all day. Hunter wants his gates." "He was at the forge all day. He just came down for a tool of some sort," Fee answered quickly; Padraic was too hard on Frank. "Oh, Daddy, Frank is the best brother! He saved my Agnes from being killed, and he's going to glue her hair on again for me after tea." "That's good," her father said drowsily, leaning his head back in the chair and closing his eyes. It was hot in front of the stove, but he didn't seem to notice; beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, glistening. He put his arms behind his head and fell into a doze. It was from Padraic Cleary that his children got their various shades of thick, waving red hair, though none had inherited quite such an aggressively red head as his. He was a small man, all steel and springs in build, legs bowed from a lifetime among horses, arms elongated from years shearing sheep; his chest and arms were covered in a matted golden fuzz which would have been ugly had he been dark. His eyes were bright blue, crinkled up into a perman- ent squint like a sailor's from gazing into the far distance, and his face was a pleasant one, with a whimsical smiling quality about it that made other men like him at a glance. His nose was magnificent, a true Roman nose which must have puzzled his Irish confreres, but Ireland has ever been a shipwreck coast. He still spoke with the soft quick slur of the Galway THE THORN BIRDS / 15
Irish, pronouncing his final t's as th's, but almost twenty years in the Antipodes had forced a quaint overlay upon it, so that his a's came out as i's and the speed of his speech had run down a little, like an old clock in need of a good winding. A happy man, he had managed to weather his hard and drudging existence better than most, and though he was a rigid disciplinarian with a heavy swing to his boot, all but one of his children adored him. If there was not enough bread to go around, he went without; if it was a choice between new clothes for him or new clothes for one of his offspring, he went without. In its way, that was more reliable evidence of love than a million easy kisses. His temper was very fiery, and he had killed a man once. Luck had been with him; the man was English, and there was a ship in Dun Laoghaire harbor bound for New Zealand on the tide. Fiona went to the back door and shouted, "Tea!" The boys trailed in gradually, Frank bringing up the rear with an armload of wood, which he dumped in the big box beside the stove. Padraic put Meggie down and walked to the head of the non- company dining table at the far end of the kitchen, while the boys seated themselves around its sides and Meggie scrambled up on top of the wooden box her father put on the chair nearest to him. Fee served the food directly onto dinner plates at her worktable, more quickly and efficiently than a waiter; she carried them two at a time to her family, Paddy first, then Frank, and so on down to Meggie, with herself last. "Erckle! Stew!" said Stuart, pulling faces as he picked up his knife and fork. "Why did you have to name me after stew?" "Eat it," his father growled. The plates were big ones, and they were literally heaped with food: boiled potatoes, lamb stew and beans cut that day from the garden, ladled in huge portions.