‘You shall have reason to remember this—this most insolent behaviour. You shall know——’ begins Mrs. Prior, white with wrath; but Mrs. Denis will have none of her.
‘I know one thing, any way,’ says she, ‘that out ov this ye go, this minnit-second. Ye can tell yer nevvy all about it whin ye git out, an’ the sooner ye’re out, the sooner ye can tell him; an’ I wish ye joy of the tellin’! Come now!’—she steps up to Mrs. Prior with a menacing air—‘quick march!’
This grand old soldier—with whom even her husband, good man and true as he had proved himself on many a battlefield, would probably have come off second best at a close tussle—now sidling up to Mrs. Prior with distinct battle in her eyes, that lady deems it best to lay down her arms and sound a retreat.
‘This disreputable conduct only coincides with the whole of this establishment,’ says Mrs. Prior, making a faint effort to sustain her position whilst being literally moved towards the gate by the powerful personality and still more powerful arm of Mrs. Denis. The latter does not touch her, indeed, but she keeps waving that muscular member up and down like a windmill, in a most threatening manner. ‘You understand that I shall report all this to Mr. Wyndham?’
‘Ye’ve said all that before,’ says Mrs. Denis, with great contempt. ‘An’ now I’ll tell you something. That report ye spake of, in my humble opinion, will make mighty little noise!’
After that she closes the gate with scant ceremony on Mrs. Prior’s departing heels.
CHAPTER XLVI.
‘To hear an open scandal is a curse;
But not to find an answer is a worse.’
Mrs. Prior, thus forcibly ejected (ejections are the vogue in Ireland), commences her return journey to Crosby Park, smarting considerably under her wrongs and the big umbrella she is holding over her head. She has gone but a little way, however, when, on suddenly turning a corner, she finds herself face to face with Wyndham.