“Am I, sir?” said the fellow, who now eyed him with a calm and steady defiance, as though he had submitted to all he meant to bear. Sewell felt this, and though he returned the stare, it was with a far less courageous spirit. “Well?” cried he at last, as though, no longer able to endure the situation, he desired to end it at any cost,—“well?”
“I suppose your honor wouldn't have time to settle with me now?”
“To settle with you! What do you call settle, my good fellow? Our reckonings are very short ones, or I'm much mistaken. What 's this settlement you talk of?”
“It's down here in black and white,” said the other, producing a folded sheet of paper as he spoke. “I put down the payments as I made them, and the car-hire and a trifle for refreshment; and if your honor objects to anything, it's easy to take it off; though, considering I was often on the watch till daybreak, and had to come in from Howth on foot before the train started of a morning, a bit to eat and to drink was only reasonable.”
“Make an end of this long story. What do you call the amount?”
“It's nothing to be afeard of, your honor, for the whole business,—the tracking him out, the false keys I had made for his trunk and writing-case, eight journeys back and forwards, two men to swear that he asked them to take the Celts' oath, and the other expenses as set down in the account. It's only twenty-seven pound four and eightpence.”
“What?”
“Twenty-seven, four and eight; neither more nor less.”
A very prolonged whistle was Sewell's sole reply.
“Do you know, O'Reardon,” said he at last, “it gives me a painfully low opinion of myself to see that, after so many months of close acquaintance, I should still appear to you to be little short of an idiot? It is very distressing—I give you my word, it is—very distressing.”