A rap at Tom Ingoldsby's door the following morning startled him as he was shaving—he cut his chin.
“Come in, and be d——d to you!” said the martyr, pressing his thumb on the scarified epidermis. The door opened, and exhibited Mr. Barney Maguire.
“Well, Barney, what is it?” quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular of his visitant.
“The master, sir——”
“Well, what does he want?”
“The loanst of a breeches, plase your honor.”
“Why, you don't mean to tell me—By Heaven, this is too good!” shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Why, Barney, you don't mean to say the ghost has got them again?”
Mr. Maguire did not respond to the young squire's risibility; the cast of his countenance was decidedly serious.
“Faith, then, it's gone they are sure enough! Hasn't meself been looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter of that, and divil a ha'p'orth of breeches is there to the fore at all:—I'm bothered entirely!”
“Hark'ee! Mr. Barney,” said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and letting a crimson stream “incarnadine the multitudinous” lather that plastered his throat—“this may be all very well with your master, but you don't humbug me, sir:—Tell me instantly what have you done with the clothes?”