Mr. Arnot was in no gentle mood, for, while he had carried out his programme, the machinery of the legal process had not worked smoothly. Very disagreeable things had been said to him in the hearing of his clerks and others. "Of course, they are not true," thought the gentleman; "but his insolent words will go out in the accounts of the affair as surely as my own."
If Haldane had been utterly overwhelmed and broken down, and had shown only the cringing spirit of a detected and whipped cur, Mr. Arnot's complacency would have been perfect. But as it was, the affair had gone forward in a jarring, uncomfortable manner, which annoyed and irritated him as would a defective, creaking piece of mechanism in one of his factories. Opposition, friction of any kind, only made his imperious will more intolerant of disobedience or neglect; therefore he summoned Pat in a tone whose very accent foretold the doom of the "intelligent Irishman."
"Did I not order you to give no information to any one concerning what occurred last night?" he demanded in his sternest tone.
Pat hitched and wriggled, for giving up his forty dollars a month was like a surgical operation. He saw that his master was incensed, and in no mood for extenuation; so he pleaded—
"Misther Arnot, won't ye plaze slape on it afore ye gives me me discharge. If ye'll only think a bit about them newspaper men, ye'll know it could not be helped a' tall. If they suspicion that a man has anything in him that they're wantin' to know, they the same as put a corkscrew intil him, and pull till somethin' comes, and thin they make up the rest. Faix, sur, I niver could o' got by 'em aloive wid me letther onless a little o' the news had gone intil their rav'nous maws."
"Then I'll find a man who can get by them, and who is able to obey my orders to the letter. The cashier will pay you up to date; then leave the premises."
"Och, Misther Arnot, me woife'll be the death o' me, and thin ye'll have me bluid on yer sowl. Give me one more—"
"Begone!" said his employer harshly; "too much time has been wasted already."
Pat found that his case was so desperate that he became reckless, and, instead of slinking off, he, too showed the same insubordination and disregard for Mr. Arnot's power and dignity that had been so irritating in Haldane. Clapping his hat on one side of his head, and with such an insolent cant forward that it quite obscured his left eye, Pat rested his hands on his hips, and with one foot thrust out sidewise, he fixed his right eye on his employer with the expression of sardonic contemplation, and then delivered himself as follows:
"The takin' up a few minits o' yer toime is a moighty tirrible waste, but the sindin' of a human bain to the divil is no waste a' tall a' tall: that's the way ye rason, is it? I allers heerd that yer in'ards were made o' cast-iron, and I can belave—"