Should I not attempt to borrow a pair? This, all the world will say, should have been my first idea. But I have not yet mentioned that I am myself a large-boned man, and that my feet are especially well developed. I had never for a moment entertained a hope that I should find any one in that house whose boot I could wear. But at last I rang the bell. I would send for Jack, and if everything failed, I would communicate my grief to him.
I had to ring twice before anybody came. The servants, I well knew, were putting the dinner on the table. At last a man entered the room, dressed in rather shabby black, whom I afterwards learned to be the butler.
“What is your name, my friend?” said I, determined to make an ally of the man.
“My name? Why Larry sure, yer honer. And the masther is out of his sinses in a hurry, becase yer honer don’t come down.”
“Is he though? Well now, Larry; tell me this; which of all the gentlemen in the house has got the largest foot?”
“Is it the largest foot, yer honer?” said Larry, altogether surprised by my question.
“Yes; the largest foot,” and then I proceeded to explain to him my misfortune. He took up first my top-boot, and then the shooting-boot—in looking at which he gazed with wonder at the nails;—and then he glanced at my feet, measuring them with his eye; and after this he pronounced his opinion.
“Yer honer couldn’t wear a morsel of leather belonging to ere a one of ’em, young or ould. There niver was a foot like that yet among the O’Conors.”
“But are there no strangers staying here?”
“There’s three or four on ’em come in to dinner; but they’ll be wanting their own boots I’m thinking. And there’s young Misther Dillon; he’s come to stay. But Lord love you—” and he again looked at the enormous extent which lay between the heel and the toe of the shooting apparatus which he still held in his hand. “I niver see such a foot as that in the whole barony,” he said, “barring my own.”