“I suppose,” says Miss Caroline, “you mean a very dark lady, Mrs. Quinlan—a brunette?”
“I do not, then—rale black she is, I’m told. Out of the Indies, or Africa, or some of them places.”
“Dear me!” Our hostess is much puzzled. “Is he thinking of marrying her, Mrs. Quinlan?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. I wouldn’t put anything past him, Miss Carrie!”
A black lady! Was this to be the end of twenty-five years’ expectation?
“Well, now, and is he bringing her with him to-morrow night?”
“Och, maybe he is! He’s coming by the midnight train, Miss Carrie, and the Lord knows what time in the world they’ll be up here.”
“Oh, he must mean to marry her!” says Miss Carrie, and Mrs. Quinlan laughs again exhaustedly with an undercurrent of plaintiveness, and remarks once more that she wouldn’t put it past him.
We go through the house in Mrs. Quinlan’s wake. There is something that looks like a kitchen rubber laid over one corner of the mahogany table in the great red-papered dining-room; and on it a crusty loaf flanks a dim glass and a cracked plate. Mrs. Quinlan casts a phrase of explanation as she trails us around.
“He do be looking for his bit of dinner early.” We presume “he” to be the “crathur that gives no trouble.”