“Let Joe wait, that will be better, sir,” whispered O'Reilly; “we cannot be too cautious here.” And with a motion of the hand he dismissed the waiter, who, true to his order, seemed never to hear “an aside.”
“Leave me by myself, Bob, for half an hour; I 'd like to collect my thoughts,—to settle and think over this meeting. It's past eleven now, and she said twelve o'clock in the note.”
“Well, I 'll take a stroll over the hills, and be back for dinner about three; you'll be up by that time.”
“That will I, and very hungry too,” muttered the old man. “This dying scene has cost me the loss of my breakfast; and, faith, I 'm so weak and low, my head is quite dizzy. There 's an old saying, Mocking is catching; and sure enough there may be some truth in it too.”
O'Reilly affected not to hear the remark, and moved towards the door, when he turned about and said,—
“I should say, sir, that the wisest course would be to avoid anything like coercion, or the slightest approach to it. The more the appeal is made to her feelings of compassion and pity—”
“For great age and bodily infirmity,” croaked the old man, while the filmy orbs shot forth a flash of malicious intelligence.
“Just so, sir. To others' eyes you do indeed seem weak and bowed down with years. It is only they who have opportunity to recognize the clearness of your intellect and the correctness of your judgment can see how little inroad time has made.”
“Ay, but it has, though,” interposed the old man, irritably. “My hand shakes more than it used to do; there 's many an operation I 'd not be able for as I once was.”
“Well, well, sir,” said his son, who found it difficult to repress the annoyance he suffered from his continual reference to the old craft; “remember that you are not called upon now to perform these things.”