“I hear her, and I think this isn’t the house for her.”
“How do you mean?—what are you saying?” cried he, angrily.
“She’ll be better and more at home at Tom M’Cafferty’s, that’s what I mean,” said she, sturdily.
“But I took a room here.”
“And you’ll not get it,” rejoined she, setting her arms akimbo; “and if you want to know why, maybe you’d hear it, and hear more than you like.”
“Come away—come away; let us find out this other place, wherever it be,” said Kate, hurriedly.
“The other place is down there, where you see the red sign,” said the landlady, half pushing her, as she spoke, into the street.
Shivering with cold, and wet through, Kate reached the little “shebeen,” or carriers’ inn, where, however, they received her with kindness and civility, the woman giving up to her her own room, and doing her very best to wait on her and assist her. As her trunk had been forgotten at the inn, however, Kate had to wait till O’Rorke fetched it, and as Mr. O’Rorke took the opportunity of the visit to enter on a very strong discussion with the landlady for her insolent refusal to admit them, it was nigh an hour before he got back again.
By this time, what with the effects of cold and wet, and what with the intense anxieties of the morning, Kate’s head began to ache violently, and frequent shiverings gave warning of the approach of fever. Her impatience, too, to be in time for the post became extreme. She wanted to write to her uncle; she was confident that, by a frank, open statement of what she had done, and said, and seen, she could deprecate his anger. The few words in which she could describe her old grandfather’s condition, would, she felt certain, move her uncle to thoughts of forgiveness. “Is he coming?—can you see him with my trunk?—why does he delay?” cried she at every instant. “No, no, don’t talk to me of change of clothes; there is something else to be thought of first. What can it be that keeps him so long? Surely it is only a few steps away. At last!—at last!” exclaimed she, as she heard O’Rorke’s voice in the passage. “There—there, do not delay me any longer. Give me that desk; I don’t want the other, it is my desk, my writing-desk, I want. Leave me now, my good woman—leave me now to myself.”
“But your shoes, Miss; let me just take off your shoes. It will kill you to sit that way, dripping and wet through.”