"Och! sure! I always knew a milithary man, for he enters with his lift foot first! Many deserters who would may-be have escaped, but the thrick betrayed 'em. A curious fact! Will ye be pleased to sit on your four quarthers, Captain?"
A smile of contempt and ridicule curled on the haughty lip of Captain De Crespigny, while he proudly drew back, saying, in a tone of great reserve, and with the very slightest possible soupcon of a bow, "Excuse me, sir, I must have mistaken the house!"
"Arrah! not at all! not in the very laste. Sure! I'm here for the purpose!" exclaimed the stranger, starting up from his recumbent position with astonishing agility, and closing the door. "Isn't it relations we shall be before long, and why should we meet as strangers?"
"Relations! what do you mean, sir? Here is some ridiculous blunder!" replied Captain De Crespigny, turning contemptuously on his heel. "Allow me to pass! Good morning!"
"Well! relations or connexions, it's all one," continued the Irishman, with a look of easy good humor. "My aunt, Mrs. Smythe, dropped me a line to say I would be wanted about the settlement, though, for the matter of that, there is not much, I fancy, on either of your parts to settle. More gold on the outside of the pocket than the inside, Captain! Hey! excuse me! but as my aunt says, in the matther of money, we take the will for the deed!"
"You must be slightly deranged, sir," interrupted Captain De Crespigny, in a tone of angry perplexity; "I have heard that a madman is loose about this neighborhood, and I need not go far, I see, to find him."
"What! Hey! Sure you're not going to forswear all, or say thing you have said to my pretty cousin, Caroline. We do make short work of our courtships in Dublin, sure enough; but when my aunt told me this morning how soon you had come to the point with Caroline, and nothing left but to fix the day, I laughed ready to kill myself, and says I, 'you beat all Ireland to sticks!'"
"No more of this folly, sir!" exclaimed Captain De Crespigny, with rising irritation, and in his most peremptory tone. "Detain me here one moment longer, and I shall send you a shorter way down stairs than you ever tried before!"
"Och, murder! you'll excuse me, sir, but I've not been dipped in the Shannon for nothing! This must all be settled as gintlemen usually settle these affairs in our counthry! Sure you met my cousin at Sir Arthur's many a time, and you'll not be afther denying that she convarsed with you every day for a matther of four hours!"
"Perhaps she had that honor, but what then?"