Sheila McBride

Who?
Irish cousin of the Malone family. Initially misunderstood, eventually appreciated. Major character in "Leave It to Beany." Her weight issues are handled in a way readers of today would consider clumsy, to say the least.

Beany meets Sheila
The following excerpt is Beany's initial introduction to Sheila. After much anticipation for the welcoming of a lonely, frightened, shy, love-hungry girl from Ireland, Beany was thrown for a loop-and did not camouflage her feelings well:

" . . .anyone so short and stocky should never wear a dress which fitted snugly and with a drape effect at the side. The dress was blue (basement blue, Mary Fred always called that shade of bright, deep blue). And the boxy, short coat over the dress should have been worn with a pencil-slim skirt. But it was her hair, her black hair done up in a mass of little sausage curls, that made Beany sum her up and dismiss her as gruesome.' "

"There was no wistfulness, no lonely ache in those eyes that Beany had been so sure would be blue or gray like the mists over Ireland. There was only defiance that seemed to proclaim, "I don't care whether you like me or not."

"But you, you aren't Sheila McBride, are you?" Beany gasped.

"Yes," the voice said shortly. That one word was in itself proof that the speaker had come from Ireland. It was "yiss" as though it had two, maybe three 's's on it.

Beany fought desperately to recover her poise, to re-shift her mental images. But each look made her heart sink deeper. It wasn't only the blue dress (But oh, those blue glass earrings!) Maybe Uncle Matthew had bought her that dress, thinking sequins were pretty.(But oh, those sausage curls!) Yes, maybe some clerk had sold Uncle Matthew that dress and Sheila hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings (But oh, those wabbly, spike-heeled pumps!)"

Ultimately, Sheila comes to Beany's aid as she is laden with the care of a baby (whom Beany mistakenly takes into the Malone home). ". . . And then she found that Sheila was shaking her and saying, "Leave off your crying, Beany! And did I say I wouldn't be going home with you and caring for the wee one here. Aye, and I can be fixing trays and cosseting the owl one when his mind goes dark."

Why had Beany ever thought Sheila McBride's voice was harsh and clipped and flat. It seemed to Beany, as she blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes, that she had never heard words with such chiding, caressing gentleness as 'Leave off your crying, Beany.'

And Johnny himself would find lilting poetry in her, "and cosseting the owl one when his mind goes dark. . .'"