Pixie O'Shaughnessy

Pixie O'Shaughnessy was at once the joy and terror of the school.

It hadbeen a quiet, well-conducted seminary before her time, or it seemed so, atleast, looking back after the arrival of the wild Irish tornado, before whosepranks the mild mischief of the Englishers was as water unto wine.

Pixie wasentered in the school-lists as "Patricia Monica de Vere O'Shaughnessy," butno one ever addressed her by such a title, not even her home-people, bywhom the name was considered at once as a tragedy and a joke of thepurest water.Mrs O'Shaughnessy had held stern ideas about fanciful names for herchildren, on which subject she had often waxed eloquent to her friends.