"The deuce!" shouted the Major, "your heart, did you say?"
"I did, sir."
"You are quite sure! Your heart?—you are certain it was your heart? Not your liver? Think, man!"
"He did not so much as allude to that organ, sir, though I have no doubt he was capable of it."
While we gazed upon one another, lost in a maze of extravagant surmise, a riotous rush of feet took the staircase by storm, and the door crashed open before two hilarious Irishmen, of whom the spokesman wore the reddest thatch of hair it has ever been my lot to cast eyes on. The other, so far as I can remember, confined his utterances to frequent, vociferous, and wholly inarticulate cries of the chase.
The Major presented them to us as Captain Tom O'Halloran and Mr. Finucane.
"And we've had the divvle's own luck, Major, dear," announced Tom O'Halloran. "The blayguard's from home. Ah, now! don't be dispirited, 'tis an early walk he's after takin'; at laste, that's what the slip of a gurrl towld us who answered the door; and mighty surprised she seemed to open it to a pair of customers at such an hour. For what d'ye suppose he calls himself when he's at home? A jooler, sorr; a dirthy jooler."
"A jeweller!" I cried aloud.
"No more, no less. Says I, there's quare gentlefolks going in these times, but I don't cool my heels waitin' in a jooler's shop with a challenge for the principal when he chooses to walk in to business. So I said to the gurrl: 'You may tell your master,' I said, 'there's two gentlemen have called, and will have his blood yet in a bottle,' I said; 'but any time will do between this and to-morrow.' And with that I came away. But Mr. Finucane here suggested that, whilst we were at it, we might save time and engage the surgeon. So on our way back we rang up Dr. Frampton. No luck again; the doctor was out. Faix! early walkin' seems the fashion at this health resort. But we've brought along his assistant, if that's any use to you, and he's downstairs at this moment on the door-mat."
The captain put his head outside and whistled. Mr. Finucane assisted with a lifelike imitation of a coach-horn, and Mr. MacRea, thus summoned, appeared upon the threshold.