"You needn't be afraid," cried Winnie and Murtagh together. "They won't get a word out of us."
"But," continued Murtagh, "how will you manage?"
"God bless yez, God bless yez," she answered warmly. And then in a different tone: "Let me alone for bamboozling the polis if they come here after him. All he'll want will be a couple of hours. If he gets till this evening, never a man o' the polis will lay a hand on him."
The words were scarcely out of her mouth when a shaking of the rickety garden gate told that some one was coming. The next instant Mr. Plunkett himself stood upon the threshold.
The children glanced in despair round the room. But as if by magic, the bedroom door was shut, Mrs. O'Toole's cap put straight, and she was bending over the fire stirring something in a saucepan. The children alone were confused; Mrs. O'Toole said calmly:
"I tell you, Mr. Murtagh, honey, he went out early to the bog with his father to cut peat, an' the father said maybe they'd be in to dinner and maybe they wouldn't."
"Are you speaking of your son?" inquired Mr. Plunkett, looking with suspicion at Murtagh and Winnie.
Mrs. O'Toole turned round in well-feigned astonishment at the new voice. She dropped a respectful courtesy as she answered:
"I am, yer honor."
She had been off her guard when the children came; but now Pat was out with his father sure enough, and she had such a bad recollection for names, she could not rightly call to mind whether it was out Ballybrae way he was, or up past Armaghbaeg, or maybe it wasn't there at all but up over the hills. But anyway he'd very likely be in to dinner, so it wouldn't be worth sending for him yet awhile, till they saw whether he'd be coming.