“I believe you are quite correct; but may I, in return for your considerate inquiries, ask one question on my own part? You are, perhaps, sufficiently acquainted with the locality to inform me if a Miss Daly resides in this village, and where.”
“Miss Daly, sir, did inhabit that cottage yonder, where you see the oars on the thatch, but it has been let to the Moors of Ballymena; they pay two-ten a week for the three rooms and the use of the kitchen; smart that, ain't it?”
“And Miss Daly resides at present—”
“She 's one of us,” said the little man, with a significant jerk of his thumb to the blue board with the gilt letters; “not much of that, after all; but she lives under the sway of 'Mother Fum,' though, from one caprice or another, she don't mix with the other boarders. Do you know her yourself?”
“I had that honor some years ago.”
“Much altered, I take it, since that; down in the world too! She was an heiress in those days, I 've heard, and a beauty. Has some of the good looks still, but lost all the shiners.”
“Am I likely to find her at home at this hour?” said Darcy, moving away, and anxious for an opportunity to escape his communicative friend.
“No, not now; never shows in the morning. Just comes down to dinner, and disappears again. Never takes a hand at whist—penny points tell up, you know—seem a trifle at first, but hang me if they don't make a figure in the budget afterwards. There, do you see that fat lady with the black bathing-cap?—no, I mean the one with the blue baize patched on the shoulder, the Widow Mackie,—she makes a nice thing of it,—won twelve and fourpence since the first of the month. Pretty creature that yonder, with one stocking on,—Miss Boyle, of Carrick-maclash.”
“I must own,” said Darcy, dryly, “that, not having the privilege of knowing these ladies, I do not conceive myself at liberty to regard them with due attention.”
“Oh! they never mind that here; no secrets among us.”