“Yes; I have been thinking of it, but I am not sure. I have to wait for an answer from my aunt in Boston before I arrange anything,” I said, with a confusion which took me unawares.
Miss Burke looked at me with delighted sagacity.
“Oh, now, I know quite well what that means! I don’t believe you’re going away at all—do you, Mr. O’Neill?”
In spite of my own embarrassment, it gave an indefinable pleasure to see, in the imperfect light afforded by Miss Burke’s lace-shrouded windows, that Nugent’s imperturbable face was slowly changing in colour from its usual brown to a dull crimson.
But Miss Mimi, in the fullness of her heart, did not wait for his answer.
“I’ll talk to Willy about it,” she went on. “I’ll engage he won’t let you be running away from us like this!”
The fact that Nugent had turned away, and was speaking to Miss Croly, gave me sufficient assurance to make some airy response. But I had lost confidence in myself, and, cutting short the conversation, I again took refuge in my chair near Mrs. Barrett.
For some little time Mrs. Jackson-Croly’s voice dominated the room, and obviated all necessity for conversation on the part of any one else. She also was talking of going away.
“Yes, Mrs. Burke,” she said; “I’m thinking of taking the girls to Southsea. There’s such nice military society there. I always like to take them to England as often as I can, on account of the accent. I loathe a Cork brogue! My fawther took me abroad every year; he was so alormed lest I’d acquire it, and I assure you, when we were children, he used to insist on mamma’s putting cotton wool in our ears when we went to old Mr. Flannagan’s church, for fear we’d ketch his manner of speaking.”
“Dear, dear!” said Mrs. Burke, sympathetically, wholly unmoved by this instance of the refinement of Mrs. Croly’s father. “Poor old Johnny Flannagan! He had a beautiful voice in the pulpit. I declare”—turning to me—“sometimes you’d think the people out in the street would hear him, and the next minute you’d think ’twas a pigeon cooing to you.”