“’Deed, then, I don’t know; some little scaramouch from the sthreets, I’m thinking. But he did be bringing a letther from Misther Brant; ’tis there on the table.”
Jarvis sauntered across the room and took a dirty scrap of paper from beneath a paperweight on the small writing table. It was a misspelled pencil scrawl, signed with Brant’s name, but he did not have to look twice to decide that it was the clumsiest of forgeries, written evidently by some one who had never so much as seen Brant’s handwriting.
“Mary, dear,” he said feelingly, “you are a pearl of price, and the mate to you has never been found.”
“Be off wid you wid your flatthering tongue!”
“It’s not flattery—never a word of it. Did Mrs. Seeley see this letter?”
“Sure, she did that same. ’Twas to her that the b’y did be giving it.”
“And she gave the boy the suit of clothes it calls for?”
“Av coorse she did. And ’tis myself as was wondering fwhat Misther Brant would be wanting wid them ould rags.”
“From all our friends—so they be women—good Lord deliver us!” said Jarvis under his breath; then aloud: “That was quite right, of course. Did you happen to see the clothes yourself, Mary?”
“I did that; an ould dirty suit of pepper-and-salt it was, the likes of fwhat Misther Brant never did be wearing in the whole swate life av him.”