“It’s that romancer Brian, that’s done it all,” cried Phineas O’Flaherty.
“Mr. O’Flaherty, if it’s not the truth may I—oh, didn’t I hear her voice, like the wail of a girl in distress?” cried Brian.
“Like what?” said Mr. Airey.
“Oh, you don’t believe anything—we all know that, sir,” said Brian.
“A girl in distress—I believe in that, at any rate,” said Edmund.
“Now!” said Miss Stafford, “don’t you think that I might recite something to these poor people?” She turned to Lady Innisfail. “Poor people! They may never have heard a real recitation—‘The Dove Cote,’ ‘Peter’s Blue Bell’—something simple.”
There was a movement among her group.
“The sooner we get back to the Castle the better it will be for all of us,” said Lady Innisfail. “Yes, Father Constantine, we distinctly looked for a native bard, and we are greatly disappointed. Who ever heard of a genuine Cruiskeen without a native bard? Why, the thing’s absurd!”
“A Connaught Oberammergau without a native bard! Oh, Padre mio—Padre mio!” said Miss Stafford, daintily shaking her double eye-glasses at the priest.
“My lady,” said he, “you heard what the man said. How would it be possible for us to continue this scene while that warning voice is in the air?”