“Not the least, bedad! It would be far harder to escape him, from all I hear. He watches the coach, and never leaves it till he sees the fore boot and the hind one empty; not only looking the passengers in the face, but tumbling over the luggage, reading all the names, and where they 're going. Oh, he's a wonderful man for knowledge!”
“Indeed,” said Nickie, with a look of attention to draw on the garrulity of the old man.
“I've reason to remember it well,” said Tate, putting both hands to his loins. “It was the day he dined here I got the rheumatiz in the small of my back. When I went to open the gate without there for him, he kept me talking for three quarters of an hour in the teeth of an east wind that would shave a goat,—asking me about the master and the mistress and Miss Helen, ay, and even about myself at last,—if I had any brothers, and what their names was, and who was Mister Daly, and whether he did n't keep a club-house. By my conscience, it's well for him ould Bagenal did n't hear him!”
A clattering sound from the canoe suddenly interrupted Tate's narrative; he stopped short, and muttered, in a tone of unfeigned terror,—
“That's the way always,-may I never see glory! ye can't speak of him but he hears ye!”
A rude laugh from Nickie, chorused still more coarsely by M'Dermot, arrested Tate's loquacity, and he finished his arrangements without speaking, save in a few broken sentences.
If Mr. Nickie could have been conciliated by material enjoyments, he might decidedly have confessed that the preparations for his comfort were ample and hospitable. A hot supper diffused its savory steam on a table where decanters and flasks of wine of different sorts and sizes attested that the more convivial elements of a feast were not forgotten. Good humor was, however, not to be restored by such amends. He was wounded in his self-love, outraged in his vanity; and he sat down in a dogged silence to the meal, a perfect contrast in appearance to the coarse delight of his subordinate.
While Tate remained to wait on them, Nickie's manner and bearing were unchanged. A sullen, sulky expression sat on features which, even when at the best, conveyed little better than a look of shrewd keenness; nor could the appetite with which he eat suggest a passing ray of satisfaction to his face.
“I am glad we are rid of that old fellow at last,” said he, as the door closed upon Tate. “Whether fool or knave, I saw what he was at; he would have been disrespectful if he dared.”
“I did n't mind him much, sir,” said M'Dermot, honestly confessing that the good cheer had absorbed his undivided attention.