The cockatoo gave a sudden piercing screech, like a note of admiration. Julia half got up, and then sank back into her chair.
“Are ye sure of that?”
“As sure as I have two feet,” replied Norry, “and I’ll tell ye what she’s afther it for. It’s to go live in it, and to let on she’s as grand as the other ladies in the counthry.”
Julia clenched the bony, discoloured hand that lay on the table.
“Before I saw her in it I’d burn it over my head!”
“Not a word out o’ ye about what I tell ye,” went on Norry in the same ominous whisper. “Shure she have it all mapped this minnit, the same as a pairson’d be makin’ a watch. She’s sthriving to make a match with young Misther Dysart and Miss Francie, and b’leeve you me, ’twill be a quare thing if she’ll let him go from her. Sure he’s the gentlest crayture ever came into a house, and he’s that innocent he wouldn’t think how cute she was. If ye’d seen her, ere yestherday, follying him down to the gate, and she smilin’ up at him as sweet as honey! The way it’ll be, she’ll sell Tally Ho house for a fortune for Miss Francie, though, indeed, it’s little fortune himself’ll ax!”
The words drove heavily through the pain of Julia’s head, and their meaning followed at an interval.
“Why would she give a fortune to the likes of her?” she asked; “isn’t it what the people say, it’s only for a charity she has her here?”
Norry gave her own peculiar laugh of derision, a laugh with a snort in it.
“Sharity! It’s little sharity ye’ll get from that one! Didn’t I hear the old misthress tellin’ her, and she sthretched for death—and Miss Charlotte knows well I heard her say it—‘Charlotte,’ says she, and her knees, dhrawn up in the bed, ‘Francie must have her share.’ And that was the lasht word she spoke.” Norry’s large wild eyes roved skywards out of the window as the scene rose before her. “God rest her soul, ’tis she got the death aisy!”