“Is it true what I hear, that Peter Joyce has your grazing this year?” she said casually.
“It is quite true,” answered Miss Duffy, a little defiantly. A liver attack does not pre-dispose its victims to answer in a Christian spirit questions that are felt to be impertinent.
“Well,” returned Charlotte, still looking out of the window, with her hands deep in the pockets of her black alpaca coat, “I’m sorry for it.”
“Why so?”
Julia’s voice had a sharpness that was pleasant to Miss Mullen’s ear.
“I can’t well explain the matter to ye now,” Charlotte said, turning round and looking portentously upon the sick woman, “but I have it from a sure hand that Peter Joyce is bankrupt, and will be in the courts before the year is out.”
When, a short time afterwards, Julia Duffy lay back among her madder blankets and heard the last sound of Miss Mullen’s phaeton wheels die away along the lake road, she felt that the visit had at least provided her with subject for meditation.
CHAPTER XI.
Mr. Roderick Lambert’s study window gave upon the flower garden, and consequently the high road also came within the sphere of his observations. He had been sitting at his writing-table, since luncheon-time, dealing with a variety of business, and seldom lifting his glossy black head except when some sound in the road attracted his attention. It was not his custom to work after a solid luncheon on a close afternoon, nor was it by any means becoming to his complexion when he did so; but the second post had brought letters of an unpleasant character that required immediate attention, and the flush on his face was not wholly due to hot beef-steak pie and sherry. It was not only that several of Sir Benjamin’s tenants had attended a Land League meeting the Sunday before, and that their religious director had written to inform him that they had there pledged themselves to the Plan of Campaign. That was annoying, but as the May rents were in he had no objection to their amusing themselves as they pleased during the summer; in fact, from a point of view on which Mr. Lambert dwelt as little as possible even in his own mind, a certain amount of nominal disturbance among the tenants might not come amiss. The thing that was really vexing was the crass obstinacy of his wife’s trustees, who had acquainted him with the fact that they were unable to comply with her wish that some of her capital should be sold out.
It is probably hardly necessary to say that the worthy turkey hen had expressed no such desire. A feeble, “to be sure, Roderick dear; I daresay it’d be the best thing to do; but you know I don’t understand such things,” had been her share of the transaction, and Mr. Lambert knew that the refusal of her trustees to make the desired concession would not ruffle so much as a feather; but he wished he could be as sure of the equanimity of his coachbuilder, one of whose numerous demands for payment was lying upon the table in front of him; while others, dating back five years to the period of his marriage, lurked in the pigeon-holes of his writing-table.