“To me that would only be additional offence. I 'd not endure it.”
“What could you do? You'd maybe slip a five-pound note into my hand, and say, 'Darby my man, settle this little matter for me; you know the ways of the place.'”
“I 'll not risk such an annoyance, at all events; that I 'm determined on.”
Darby began now to perceive that he had misconceived his brief, and must alter his pleadings as quickly as possible; in fact, he saw he was “stopping an earth” he had meant merely to mask. “Just leave it all to me, your honor,—leave it all to me, and I 'll have your bill for you every morning on the breakfast-table. And why would n't you? Why would a gentleman like your honor be behouldin' to any one for his meat and drink?” burst he in, with an eager rapidity. “Why would n't you say, 'Darby, bring me this, get me that, fetch me the other; expinse is no object in life tome'?”
There was a faint twinkle of humor in the eye of Conyers, and Darby stopped short, and with that half-lisping simplicity which a few Irishmen understand to perfection, and can exercise whenever the occasion requires, he said: “But sure is n't your honor laughing at me, is n't it just making fun of me you are? All because I'm a poor ignorant crayture that knows no better!”
“Nothing of that kind,” said Conyers, frankly. “I was only smiling at thoughts that went through my head at the moment.”
“Well, faix! there's one coming up the path now won't make you laugh,” said Darby, as he whispered, “It's Dr. Dill.”
The doctor was early with his patient; if the case was not one of urgency, the sufferer was in a more elevated rank than usually fell to the chances of Dispensary practice. Then, it promised to be one of the nice chronic cases, in which tact and personal agreeability—the two great strongholds of Dr. Dill in his own estimation—were of far more importance than the materia medica. Now, if Dill's world was not a very big one, he knew it thoroughly. He was a chronicle of all the family incidents of the county, and could recount every disaster of every house for thirty miles round.
When the sprain had, therefore, been duly examined, and all the pangs of the patient sufficiently condoled with to establish the physician as a man of feeling, Dill proceeded to his task as a man of the world. Conyers, however, abruptly stopped him, by saying, “Tell me how I'm to get out of this place; some other inn, I mean.”
“You are not comfortable here, then?” asked Dill.