"Oh, Darby!" said Gheena faintly.
"I doubt if the best English packs would care for me as a Master; that is, if we write an account of it to the Field," whispered Darby. "Will you send one, Gheena?"
"I would not disgrace the County," said Gheena hysterically. "Dearest is telling them all now how he accounted for that fox."
CHAPTER VIII
Gheena Freyne knitted with unskilful rapidity and stared disconsolately at a blurred and bitter afternoon. The sea whined and moaned in the harbour, a liquid carpet of warship tint broken by peevish flakes of white. Gheena could hear it because she had the window wide open, cooling the hot air of the long, rather shabby room, before her stepfather came stamping in to shut it emphatically and mutter ill-humouredly as to violent chills.
There was a constant jar as of ill-fitting machinery in motion between Gheena and George Freyne. His fussy love of authority frothed at Gheena to roll back spent and broken into angry fume, her mother's complete and somewhat elusive submission making it even more difficult to bear.
It was elusive because Mrs. Freyne having duly received Dearest George's advice and commands, perhaps as to dinner, would amble down to the kitchen and then take Anne's advice there to save trouble, causing such faint shocks as pheasants for dinner, which George had ordered to be hung for another week, or beefsteak when the economy of mutton had been heavily counselled.
"Well, you see, we did send for mutton, Dearest, and Mullcahy—what did he say, Naylour?"
"That the teeth in ye're head 'd be left is all he had in the shop, Ma'am, it was that fresh."
"Exactly, Dearest. And I thought that really at a penny a pound the dentist would soon equalize; so this is only off the sirloin we bought, George dearest."