'Be it so, Jack!' said he with a sigh. 'I shall give you a couple of letters to some friends of mine down there; and I know but one recompense you'll have for all the trouble and annoyance of this business—your pretty friend, Miss Bellew, is on a visit in the neighbourhood, and is certain to be at the race.'
Had O'Grady looked at me while he spoke he would have seen how deeply this intelligence affected me, while I myself could with difficulty restrain the increased interest I now felt in all about the matter, questioning him on every particular, inquiring into a hundred minute points, and, in fact, displaying an ardour on the subject that nothing short of my friend's preoccupation could have failed in detecting the source of. My mind now fixed on one object, I could scarcely follow him in his directions as to travelling down, secrecy, etc.
I heard something about the canal-boat, and some confused impression was on my mind about a cross-road and a jaunting-car; but the prospect of meeting Louisa, the hope of again being in her society, rendered me indifferent to all else; and as I thrust the letters he gave me into my coat-pocket, and promised an implicit observance of all his directions, I should have been sorely puzzled had he asked me to repeat them.
'Now,' continued O'Grady, at the end of about half-an-hour's rapid speaking, 'I believe I've put you in possession of all the bearings of this case. You understand, I hope, the kind of men you have to deal with, and I trust Mr. Ulick Burke is thoroughly known to you by this time?'
'Oh, perfectly,' said I, half mechanically.
'Well, then, my boy, I believe I had better say good-bye. Something tells me we shall meet ere long; meanwhile, Jack, you have my best wishes.' He paused for a moment and turned away his head, evidently affected, then added, 'You'll write to me soon, of course; and as that old fool Corny follows me in a week——'
'And is Corny going abroad?'
'Ay, confound him! like the old man in Sindbad, there 's no getting him off one's shoulders. Besides, he has a kind of superstition that he ought to close the eyes of the last of the family; and as he has frankly confessed to me this morning he knows I am in that predicament, he esteems it a point of duty to accompany me. Poor fellow, with all his faults, I can't help feeling attached to him; and were I to leave him behind me, what would become of him? No, Jack, I am fully sensible of all the inconvenience, all the ridicule of this step, but, 'faith, I prefer both to the embittering reflection I should have did I desert him.'
'Why does he remain after you, Phil? He 'll never find his way to London.'
'Oh, trust him! What with scolding, cursing, and abusing every one he meets, he'll attract notice enough on the road never to be forgotten, or left behind. But the fact is, it is his own proposition; and Corny has asked for a few days' leave of absence, for the first time for seven-and-twenty years!'