Mr. Mollett had gone down from Cork to Castle Richmond in one of those delightful Irish vehicles called a covered car. An inside-covered car is an equipage much given to shaking, seeing that it has a heavy top like a London cab, and that it runs on a pair of wheels. It is entered from behind, and slopes backwards. The sitter sits sideways, between a cracked window on one side and a cracked doorway on the other; and as a draught is always going in at the ear next the window, and out at the ear next the door, it is about as cold and comfortless a vehicle for winter as may be well imagined. Now the journey from Castle Richmond to Cork has to be made right across the Boggeragh Mountains. It is over twenty miles Irish; and the road is never very good. Mr. Mollett, therefore, was five hours in the covered car on his return journey; and as he had stopped for lunch at Kanturk, and had not hurried himself at that meal, it was very dark and very cold when he reached the house in South Main Street.
I think I have explained that Mr. Mollett senior was not absolutely a drunkard; but nevertheless, he was not averse to spirits in cold weather, and on this journey had warmed himself with whisky once or twice on the road. He had found a shebeen house when he crossed the Nad river, and another on the mountain-top, and a third at the point where the road passes near the village of Blarney, and at all these convenient resting-spots Mr. Mollett had endeavoured to warm himself.
There are men who do not become absolutely drunk, but who do become absolutely cross when they drink more than is good for them; and of such men Mr. Mollett was one. What with the cold air, and what with the whisky, and what with the jolting, Mr. Mollett was very cross when he reached the Kanturk Hotel, so that he only cursed the driver instead of giving him the expected gratuity.
"I'll come to yer honour in the morning," said the driver.
"You may go to the devil in the morning," answered Mr. Mollett; and this was the first intimation of his return which reached the ears of his expectant son.
"There's the governor," said Aby, who was then flirting with Miss O'Dwyer in the bar. "Somebody's been stroking him the wrong way of the 'air."
The charms of Miss O'Dwyer in these idle days had been too much for the prudence of Mr. Abraham Mollett; by far too much, considering that in his sterner moments his ambition led him to contemplate a match with a young lady of much higher rank in life. But wine, which "inspires us" and fires us
| "With courage, love, and joy," |
had inspired him with courage to forget his prudence, and with love for the lovely Fanny.
"Now, nonsense, Mr. Aby," she had said to him a few minutes before the wheels of the covered car were heard in South Main Street. "You know you main nothing of the sort."