“But men have taken headers—”
“They have,” said she, “and therefore we should finish our waltz.”
They did finish their waltz.
CHAPTER XI.—ON HEAVEN AND THE LORD CHANCELLOR.
MR. DURDAN was explaining something—he usually was explaining something. When he had been a member of the late Government his process of explaining something was generally regarded as a fine effort at mystification. In private his explanations were sometimes intelligible. As Harold entered the room where a straggling breakfast was proceeding—everything except dinner had a tendency to be straggling at Castle Innisfail—Mr. Dur dan was explaining how Brian had been bewildered.
It was a profitable theme, especially for a man who fondly believed that he had the power of reproducing what he imagined to be the Irish brogue of the boatman.
Harold gathered that Mr. Durdan had already had a couple of hours of deep-sea fishing in the boat with Brian—the servants were all the morning carrying into the dining-room plates of fish of his catching (audibly sneered at by the fly-fishers, who considered their supreme failures superior to the hugest successes of the deep-sea fishers).
But the fishing was not to the point. What Mr. Durdan believed to be very much to the point were the “begorras,” the “acushlas,” the “arrahs” which he tried to make his auditors believe the boatman had uttered in telling him how he had been awakened early in the night by hearing the cry of the Banshee.