“Oh, is that it? Is it my embarrassment, then, that affords you so much amusement?”
“Far from it,” said she, affectionately. “I was only laughing at that quiet little nook you retire to whenever you ought to be up and doing. Unprepared you say. Not a bit of it. Indisposed, indolent, unwilling, indifferent, any of these you like; but with a mind so full of its own good resources, and as ready to meet every contingency as any one's, don't say you are unprepared. Come, now, bear with me this once, dearest uncle, and don't be angry if I throw myself, like a rock or sandbank, betwixt you and your harbor of refuge. But I hear Mr. Scanlan's voice, and so I shall leave you. Be resolute, uncle, determined, and—'prepared'!” And with a gesture half menace and half drollery, she left the room as the attorney entered it.
Scanlan, like most of those who came but casually in contact with Martin, had conceived a low idea of his capacity,—lower by far than it deserved, since behind his indolence there lay a fund of good common-sense,—a mine, it must be acknowledged, that he seldom cared to work. The crafty man of law had, however, only seen him in his ordinary moods of careless ease and idleness, and believed that pride of family, fortune, and position were the only ideas that found access to his mind, and that by a dexterous allusion to these topics it would always be an easy task to influence and direct him.
“What's this my niece has been telling me of Lord Kilmorris?” said Martin, abruptly, and without even replying to the salutations of the other, who hovered around a chair in an uncertainty as to whether he might dare to seat himself uninvited,—“he's going to contest the borough with us, is n't he?”
Scanlan leaned one arm on the back of the chair, and in a half-careless way replied,—
“He is afraid that you and he don't quite agree, sir. He leans to measures that he suspects you may not altogether approve of.”
“Come, come, none of this balderdash with me, Master Maurice. Has he bought the fellows already, or, rather, have you bought them? Out with it, man! What will he give? Name the sum, and let us treat the matter in a business-like way.”
Scanlan sat down and laughed heartily for some minutes.
“I think you know me well enough, Mr. Martin, by this time,” said he, “to say whether I'ma likely man to meddle with such a transaction.”
“The very likeliest in Ireland; the man I 'd select amidst ten thousand.”