“You’d better just see him, Mrs Kelly,” whispered the, doctor. “You’ll find him quiet enough, now; just take him fair and asy; keep him downstairs a moment, while Jane gives her the medicine. She’d better take it just before he goes to her, and don’t let him stay long, whatever you do. I’ll be back before the evening’s over; not that I think that she’ll want me to see her, but I’ll just drop in.”
“Are you going, doctor?” said Anty, as he stepped up to the bed. He told her he was. “You’ve told Mrs Kelly, haven’t you, that I’m to see Barry alone?”
“Why, I didn’t say so,” said the doctor, looking at the widow; “but I suppose there’ll be no harm—eh, Mrs Kelly?”
“You must let me see him alone, dear Mrs Kelly!”
“If Doctor Colligan thinks you ought, Anty dear, I wouldn’t stay in the room myself for worlds.”
“But you won’t keep him here long, Miss Lynch—eh? And you won’t excite yourself?—indeed, you mustn’t. You’ll allow them fifteen minutes, Mrs Kelly, not more, and then you’ll come up;” and with these cautions, the doctor withdrew.
“I wish he was come and gone,” said the widow to her elder daughter. “Well; av I’d known all what was to follow, I’d niver have got out of my warm bed to go and fetch Anty Lynch down here that cowld morning! Well, I’ll be wise another time. Live and larn, they say, and it’s thrue, too.”
“But, mother, you ain’t wishing poor Anty wasn’t here?”
“Indeed, but I do; everything to give and nothin to get—that’s not the way I have managed to live. But it’s not that altogether, neither. I’m not begrudging Anty anything for herself; but that I’d be dhriven to let that blagguard of a brother of hers into the house, and that as a frind like, is what I didn’t think I’d ever have put upon me!”
Barry made his appearance about an hour after the time at which they had begun to expect him; and as soon as Meg saw him, one of them flew upstairs, to tell Anty and give her her tonic. Barry had made himself quite a dandy to do honour to the occasion of paying probably a parting visit to his sister, whom he had driven out of her own house to die at the inn. He had on his new blue frock-coat, and a buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, over which his watch-chain was gracefully arranged. His pantaloons were strapped clown very tightly over his polished boots; a shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his hand he was dangling an ebony cane. In spite, however, of all these gaudy trappings, he could not muster up an easy air; and, as he knocked, he had that look proverbially attributed to dogs who are going to be hung.