“How can I hould you? You may hould yourself, but I can’t hould you!”
Vyner’s cheek flushed, partly with anger, partly with shame, and he said: “With this you will buy what clothes your grandchild will require at present. Do not spend more of it than you like, for these things shall be looked to by others; and this will pay the cost of your journey. I have written down the way you are to go, and also the name and place of my house. My present intention is to be at home within a fortnight; but if you arrive before that, you will be equally welcome.”
“Very well, Sir,” said the old man, as he deposited the bank-notes in a leather purse. “I may go now?”
“Yes, you may go. Remember, however, Malone, that if between this and next Thursday week, you are inclined to think that my last offer is a better one——”
“No fear of that, your honour!” broke in the old man, with a laugh. “I’m a poor man and an ignorant man, but I know what’s best for the stock I come from. It isn’t money we want. It’s the place where we can make money, and more than money;” and with a jerk of his frieze coat over his shoulder, the old fellow strode away down the valley.
CHAPTER XV. Mr. M’KINLAY’S MISSION
When Mr. M’Kinlay set out from the cottage in Wales, it was in no especial good humour towards Miss Courtenay. She had what is vulgarly called “snubbed him” and this is a process uncommonly painful to a well-to-do middle-aged gentleman, accustomed to a great deal of daily respect, and not a little looked up to in his peculiar sphere.
All night long, as he travelled, he pondered over these things, his irritation growing ever deeper. He recalled every word she had said, and in his anger even imitated to himself the careless impertinence of her tone as she said, “And are you going yachting?” just as if such, a thought was too absurd to be entertained. “And why not, I’d like to know? Is there anything in my status or position that would make a pleasure excursion ridiculous in a man like me? I could afford it. I hope she doesn’t imply I’m too old for it. Age is an ugly subject; she’d better not cross-examine her witnesses there. And my red tapery! What a blessing it was that there were creatures to docket, and tie up, and register, and save superior souls the trouble of remembering anything! And then her last impertinence, when, after a sneer at Irish property, she said she wished I had one! I’m much mistaken, Madam,” cried he, half aloud, “if a little of that same secluded savagery that Ireland affords wouldn’t do you a world of good—if a couple of years of country life, with a bog landscape and a rainy sky, wouldn’t prove an admirable alterative to you! No fine acquaintances, none of those pleasant idlers, who like to run down for a week to the country, and bring all the gossip of town along with them, will follow you to Ireland. No fealty, no affection will cross the Channel and traverse that dreary waste of morass, dotted with mud-hovels, they call in irony the Green Isle. If anything could bring you to your senses, Madam, it would be a residence here.”
Such were Mr. M’Kinlay’s thoughts as the mail lumbered heavily along through the deeply-rutted roads, and the rain swooped down in torrents. “I should like to see her yonder,” mattered he, as they passed a dreary two-storied house that stood alone on the bleak moor they call the Curragh. “That’s the reformatory I should like to try you with!”