'Get along there. Nabocklish! How lazy the devil is! 'Faith, we'll be late, do our best. Captain, darling, put your watch back a quarter of an hour, and I'll stand to it that we are both by Dublin time.'
'Is he, then, so very particular/ said I, 'as all that comes to?'
'Particular, is it? 'Faith he is. Why, man, there is as much ringing of bells before dinner in that house as if every room in it was crammed with company. And the old butler will be there, all in black, and his hair powdered, and beautiful silk stockings on his legs, every day in the week, although, maybe, it is a brace of snipe will be all that is on the table. Take the whip for a while, and lay into that baste—my heart is broke flogging him.'
Had Sir Simon only watched the good priest's exertions for the preceding quarter of an hour, he certainly would have had a hard heart if he had criticised his punctuality. Shouting one moment, cursing the next, thrashing away with his whip, and betimes striding over the splash-board to give a kick with his foot, he undoubtedly spared nothing in either voice or gesture.
'There, glory be to God!' cried he at last, as he turned sharp from the shady road into a narrow avenue of tall lime-trees; 'take the reins, Captain, till I wipe my face. Blessed hour, look at the state I am in! Lift him to it, and don't spare him. May I never, if that isn't the last bell, and he only gives five minutes after that!'
Although I certainly should have preferred that Father Tom had continued his functions as charioteer now that we were approaching the house, common humanity, however, compelled me to spare him, and I flogged and chucked the old beast with all my might up the rising ground towards the house. I had but just time to see that the building before us was a large embattled structure, which, although irregular and occasionally incongruous in detail, was yet a fine specimen of the castellated Gothic of the seventeenth century. Massive square towers flanked the angles, themselves surmounted by smaller turrets, that shot up into the air high above the dark woods around them. The whole was surrounded by a fosse, now dry, and overgrown with weeds; but the terrace, which lay between this and the castle, was laid out as a flower-garden, with a degree of taste and beauty that to my mind at least bespoke the fostering hand of Louisa Bellew. Upon this the windows of a large drawing-room opened, at one of which I could mark the tall and stately figure of Sir Simon, as he stood, watch in hand, awaiting our arrival. I confess, it was not without a sense of shame that I continued my flagellations at the moment. Under any circumstances, our turn-out was not quite unexceptionable; but when I thought of my own position, and of the good priest who sat beside me mopping his head and face with a huge red cotton handkerchief, I cursed my stars for the absurd exposure. Just at this instant the skirt of a white robe passed one of the windows, and I thought—I hope it was but a thought—I heard a sound of laughter.
'There, that will do. Phoebus himself couldn't do it better. I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to be in a pair of shafts before you.'
Muttering a curse on the confounded beast, I pulled short up and sprang out.
'Not late, Nicholas, I hope?' said the priest to a tall, thin old butler, who bore a most absurd resemblance to his master.
'Your reverence has a minute and a half yet; but the soup's on the table.' As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a small bit of looking-glass, in a wooden frame, and with a pocket-comb arranged his hair in a most orderly and decorous manner; which being done, he turned gravely round and said, 'Are ye ready, now, gentlemen?'