Donald was not able to deal with such locution. He ignored it and said:
“My knee-cap, my shin, Oo, come and have a look. We was mending a flue ... it was the old man’s wheelbarrow.... Didn’t I tell him of it neither!”
“O, you told him of it?”
Johnny listened to his friend’s narration very abstractedly and at last went off to the library by himself. As he walked away he was conscious of a great feeling of relief welling up in him. He could not get an alibi without Donald, not a sure one, so he would not be able to do anything tonight. He felt relieved, he whistled as he walked, he was happy again, but he went on to the library. He was going to rehearse the alibi by himself, that was the wise thing to do, of course, rehearse it, practise it; it would be perfect next week when Donald was better. So he did this. He got out a book from the odd-eyed man, who strangely enough was preoccupied and did not seem to recognize him. It was disconcerting, that; he specially wanted the man to notice him. He went into the study room rather uneasily. Ten minutes later he crept out unseen, carrying his stick—he had forgotten to ask Donald for the piece of lead—and was soon lurking in the shadow of the dark quiet little street.
It was a perfect spot, there could not be a better place, not in the middle of a town. The house had an area entry through an iron gate; at the end of a brick pathway, over a coalplate, five or six stone steps led steeply up to a narrow front door with a brass letter box, a brass knocker, and a glazed fanlight painted 29. The windows too were narrow and the whole house had a squeezed appearance. A church clock chimed eight strokes. Johnny began to wonder what he would do, what would happen, if Stringer were suddenly to come out of that gateway. Should he—would he—could he...? And then the door at the top of the steps did open wide and framed there in the lighted space young Flynn saw the figure of his own mother.
She came down the steps alone and he followed her short jerky footsteps secretly until she reached the well-lit part of the town, where he joined her. It was quite simple, she explained to him with an air of superior understanding: she had just paid Mr. Stringer a visit, waiting for letters from that humbug had made her “popped.” Had he thought she would creep on her stomach and beg for a fourpenny piece when she could put him in jail if all were known, as she would too, if it hadn’t been for her children, poor little fatherless things? No, middling boxer, not that! So she had left off work early, had gone and caught him at his lodgings and taxed him with it. He denied of it; he was that cocky, it so mortified her, that she had snatched up the clock and thrown it at him. Yes, his own clock.
“But it was only a little one, though. He was frightened out of his life and run upstairs. Then his landlady came rushing in. I told her all about it, everything, and she was that ‘popped’ with him she give me the name and address of his feons—their banns is been put up. She made him come downstairs and face me, and his face was as white as the driven snow. Johnny, it was. He was obliged to own up. The lady said to him ‘Whatever have you been at, Mr. Stringer,’ she said to him. ‘I can’t believe it, knowing you for ten years, you must have forgot yourself.’ O, a proper understanding it was,” declared Mrs. Flynn finally; “his lawyers are going to write to us and put everything in order; Duckle & Hoole, they are.”
Again a great feeling of relief welled up in the boy’s breast, as if, having been dragged into a horrible vortex he had been marvellously cast free again.
The days that followed were blessedly tranquil, though Johnny was often smitten with awe at the thought of what he had contemplated. That fool, Donald, too, one evening insisted on accompanying him to the library where he spent an hour of baffled understanding over the pages of “Rasselas.” But the lawyers Duckle & Hoole aroused a tumult of hatred in Mrs. Flynn. They pared down her fond anticipations to the minimum; they put so much slight upon her family, and such a gentlemanly decorum and generous forbearance upon the behaviour of their client, Mr. Stringer, that she became inarticulate. When informed that that gentleman desired no intercourse whatsoever with any Flynn or the offspring thereof she became speechless. Shortly, Messrs. Duckle & Hoole begged to submit for her approval a draft agreement embodying their client’s terms, one provision of which was that if the said Flynns violated the agreement by taking any proceedings against the said Stringer they should thereupon ipso facto willy nilly or whatever forfeit and pay unto him the said Stringer not by way of penalty but as damages the sum of £100. Whereupon Mrs. Flynn recovered her speech and suffered a little tender irony to emerge.
The shoemaker, whose opinion upon this draft agreement was solicited, confessed himself as much baffled by its phraseology as he was indignant at its tenor and terms.