CHAPTER IX.
GARDEN HILL.
“Was this to meet? Not so; we have not met.”
Wednesday was the Burkes’ At Home day. They were the only people in the country who had taken to themselves a “day,” and to go and see them, and to eat their peculiarly admirable cakes, had become a recognized method of spending that afternoon. To-day, at about four o’clock, when I came in, their small drawing-room was full of people, and their confidential little copper tea-kettle was already making incessant journeys between the fireplace and the tea-table.
Mr. Jimmy Barrett was carrying about cups of tea, steering his perilous way among the low velvet-covered tables and basket chairs with a face expressive of the liveliest apprehension. He was the only young man present—a fact in itself sufficiently overwhelming, and now made doubly so by the attentions which, faute de mieux, were being bestowed upon him by Miss Dennehy, a young lady whom I remembered as having been much sought after at the Mount Prospect dance.
He took the first opportunity of sitting down in an unconspicuous position behind his mother’s chair, from whence he returned feeble and evasive rejoinders to the badinage levelled at him from the sofa, on which were seated Miss Dennehy and the rector’s daughter, Miss Josie Horan. His mother, a lady whose ample proportions were a tacit reproach to her son’s meagreness of aspect, reclined imposingly in a chair by the fire, and several other ladies whom I did not know were sitting round the room.
The Misses Burke and their mother welcomed me effusively.
“Where’s Willy? I haven’t seen him this long while,” said Miss Mimi, regarding me with an expression of heartiest curiosity and good fellowship.
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Burke; “we were wondering what had become of you both.”
She was a brisk little old lady, whose bright black eyes and hooked nose were suggestive of an ancient parrakeet, and whose voice further carried out the idea. I knew well that any cross-examination that she might subject me to would be as water unto wine compared with Miss Mimi’s, and I gladly turned and addressed myself to her, and left Willy, who had just come into the room, to satisfy Miss Mimi’s thirst for information.