Pixie O'Shaughnessy
Vaizey Mrs. George de Horne
English
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Below is a summary of Pixie O'Shaughnessy
Pixie O'Shaughnessy
by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
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This is an absolutely delightful book. Pixie is a totally unique
character! Her mother had died and had left what money she had for
Pixie's education. The family live in a tumble-down old castle in
Ireland, and are all and each totally eccentric, in an Irish kind of
way. Pixies and her father travel to London, for she is to go to a
school for girls in the London suburbs. Suddenly her father realises
what a shabby little thing she is. Furthermore she has a very strong
Irish brogue. So how does she get on with the other girls. Famously,
in the end, but there were a few set-backs.
There is a very strongly written episode in the second half of the book,
where Pixie takes the blame for the loss of a perfume-bottle that had
been given to one of the mistresses by an old and beloved friend.
Everything points to Pixie being the culprit. She actually knows who
did it, but somehow had given her word that she wouldn't give the other
girl away. Pixie is punished severely, not only for having done the
deed, as generally assumed, but also for refusing to talk about it.
Could any of us show such strength of character? There are several
sequels to this book, but though good, they are mere sequels. The
inspiration that went into this book is unsurpassable. N.H.
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PIXIE O'SHAUGHNESSY
BY MRS GEORGE DE HORNE VAIZEY
CHAPTER ONE.
THE UGLY DUCKLING.
Pixie O'Shaughnessy was at once the joy and terror of the school. It
had been a quiet, well-conducted seminary before her time, or it seemed
so, at least, looking back after the arrival of the wild Irish tornado,
before whose pranks the mild mischief of the Englishers was as water
unto wine. Pixie was entered in the school-lists as "Patricia Monica de
Vere O'Shaughnessy," but no one ever addressed her by such a title, not
even her home-people, by whom the name was considered at once as a
tragedy and a joke of the purest water.
Mrs O'Shaughnessy had held stern ideas about fanciful names for her
children, on which subject she had often waxed eloquent to her friends.
"What," she would ask, "could be more trying to a large and bouncing
young woman than to find herself saddled for life with the title of
`Ivy,' or for a poor anaemic creature to pose as `Ruby' before a
derisive world?" She christened her own first daughter Bridget, and the
second Joan, and the three boys respectively Jack, Miles, and Patrick,
resolutely waving aside suggestions of more poetic names even when they
touched her fancy, or appealed to her imagination. Better err on the
safe side, and safeguard oneself from the risk of having a brood of
plain, awkward children masquerading through life under names which made
them a laughing-stock to their companions.
So she argued; but as the years passed by, it became apparent that her
children had too much respect for the traditions of the race to appear
an any such unattractive guise. "The O'Shaughnessys were always
beautiful," quoth the Major, tossing his own handsome head with the air
of supreme self-satisfaction which was his leading characteristic, "and
it's not my children that are going to break the rule," and certain it
is that one might have travelled far and wide before finding another
family to equal the one at Knock Castle in point of appearance. The
boys were fine upstanding fellows with dark eyes and aquiline features;
Bridgie was a dainty, fair-haired little lady; while Joan, (Esmeralda
for short, as her brothers had it), had reached such a climax of beauty
that strangers gasped with delight, and the hardest heart softened
before her baby smile. Well might Mrs O'Shaughnessy waver in her
decision; well might she suppose that she was safe in relaxing her
principles sufficiently to bestow upon baby number six a name more
appropriate to prospective beauty and charm. The most sensible people
have the most serious relapses, and once having given rein to her
imagination nothing less than three names would satisfy her--and those
three the high-sounding Patricia Monica de Vere.
She was an ugly baby. Well, but babies often were ugly. That counted
for nothing. It was really a bad sign if an infant were conspicuously
pretty. She had no nose to speak of, and a mouth of enormous
proportions. What of that? Babies' noses always were small, and the
mouth would not grow in proportion to the rest of the features. In a
few months she would no doubt be as charming as her sisters had been
before her; but, alas! Pixie disappointed that expectation, as she was
fated to disappoint most expectations during her life. Her nose refused
to grow bigger, her mouth to grow smaller, her small twinkling eyes
disdained the lashes which were so marked a feature in the faces of her
sisters, and her hair was thin and straight, and refused to grow beyond
her neck, whereas Bridgie and Esmeralda had curling manes so long that,
as their nurse proudly pointed out to other nurses, they could sit on
them, the darlints! and that to spare.
There was no disguising the fact that she was an extraordinarily plain
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