“Ah, man alive, you’re drunk,” shouted Barky, pushing back his chair.
“Not I. I met her in the avenue this afternoon. I went down with a small loan I promised her, and after I got there, and saw her, she suddenly slipped off bonnet, wig, and cloak, and turned into a handsome, well-dressed, elderly lady!”
Mrs. Doran, for once in her life, was too horrified to speak; her feelings were beyond the power of expression. Words failed her, and she simply sat glaring at her youngest son, as if he were some horrible monster.
“She said she had long wished to come home and see us all, and what we were like?” he resumed, “but could not face the situation. At last, as her husband was over on business, she accompanied him, and explored about here, as you saw.”
“Good-bye to her money!” roared Barky. “Mother, you’ve done me out of a million dollars, if all you told me that you said to her is true!”
Mrs. Doran’s face had become mottled with red patches.
“Just what comes of associating with low company. A lady would never have played us such a trick,” she said, when she had at last found her voice. “Is she going away early to-morrow?”
“Yes, to Queenstown, to catch the American boat.”
“Then I’ll write a line at once”—rising as she spoke.
“Mother,” protested Barky, “don’t.”