A blush still deeper than the first, and a look of offended pride, were her only answer.
“I must go in search of these good people's cards, for I forget some of their names,” said Charles; “though I believe I remember the important ones.”
This last sally was again directed towards May, but she, apparently, did not hear it.
“Who knows but your patient upstairs may be well enough to meet her friends, May?” said Sir William.
“Perhaps so. I can't tell,” answered she, vaguely; for she had but heard him imperfectly, and scarcely knew what she was replying.
CHAPTER VI. THE MEMBER FOR INCHABOGUE
Mr. O'Shea lay in his bed at the Bagni di Lucca. It was late in the afternoon, and he had not yet risen, being one of those who deem, to travesty the poet,—
That the best of all ways
To shorten our days
Is to add a few hours to the night, my dear.
In other words, he was ineffably bored and wearied, sick of the place, the people, and himself, and only wearing over the time as one might do the stated term of an imprisonment His agent—Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Mr. Miles Mahony, who was agent for all the Irish gentlemen of Mr. O'Shea's politics, and who has either estates very much encumbered, or no estates at all—had written him that letter, which might be stereotyped in every agent's office, and sent off indiscriminately by post, at due intervals, to any of the clients, for there was the same bead-roll of mishaps and calamities Ireland has been suffering under for centuries. Take any traveller or guide-book experience of the land, and it is a record of rain that never ceased. The Deluge was a passing April shower compared to the national climate. Ask any proprietor, however, more especially if a farmer, and he would tell you, “We're ruined, entirely ruined, with the drought,”—perhaps he 'd have called it “druth.” “If the rain doesn't fall before twenty-four hours, there will be no potatoes, no grass, no straw, the wheat won't fill, the cattle will be destroyed,” and so on; just as if the whole population was not soaked through like a wet sponge, and the earth a sludge of mud and swamp, to which Holland seems a sand-bank in comparison! Then came the runaway tenants, only varied by those who couldn't be induced to “run” on any terms. There was the usual “agrarian outrage,” with the increased police force quartered on the barony in consequence, and perhaps a threat of a special commission, with more expense besides. There was the extract of the judge's charge, saying that he never remembered so “heavy a calendar,” the whole winding up with an urgent appeal to send over ten or twenty pounds to repair the chapel or the priest's house, or contribute to some local object, “at your indifference to which there is very great discontent at this moment.”