"True for him!" said Flurry.
"—— 'She have written it in Latin!' says Hennessy. 'Faith she's able to write it that way, or anny other way for yee!' says I. 'Well, I'll tell ye now what ye'll do,' says Hennessy. 'There's a boy in the Medical Hall, and he's able to read all languages. Show it to him,' says he. I showed it then to the boy in the Medical Hall. Sure, the very minute he looked at it—'Elliman's Embrocation,' says he." John Kane waved his hand slightly to one side; his gestures had throughout been supple and restrained. "Sure them's the stupidest people in Hennessy's!"
My sympathies were with the house of Hennessy; I, too, had encountered Mrs. Knox's handwriting, and realised the high imaginative and deductive qualities needed in its interpreter. No individual word was decipherable, but, with a bold reader, groups could be made to conform to a scheme based on probabilities.
"You can tell the mistress what they were saying at Hennessy's about her," said Flurry.
"I will, your honour," replied John, accepting the turn in the conversation as easily as a skilful motorist changes gear. "I suppose you'll have a job for me at Tory Lodge when I get the sack from the misthress?"
"No, but they tell me I'm to be put on the Old Age Pension Committee," returned Flurry, "and I might get a chance to do something for you if you'd give over dyeing that beard you have."
"I'm sorry to say it's the Almighty is dyeing my beard for me, sir," replied John Kane, fingering a grey streak on his chin, "and I think He's after giving yourself a touch, too!" He glanced at the side of Flurry's head, and his eye travelled on to mine. There was an almost flagrant absence of triumph in it.
He put aside a beechen bough with his hand; "I'll leave the things on the hall table for you, sir," he said, choosing the perfect moment for departure, and passed out of sight. The bough swung into place behind him; it was like an exit in a pastoral play.
"She never told me about the embrocation," said Sally, leaning back against the mossed stones of the bench and looking up into the web of branches. "She never will admit that she's ill."
"Poor old Mrs. Knox!" said Philippa compassionately, "I thought she looked so ill last night when she was playing bridge. Such a tiny fragile thing, sitting wrapped up in that great old chair——"