“I want to see a gentleman called O’Grady,” said the stranger, “a Dr. O’Grady.”
“He’s here, your Excellency,” said Father McCormack, “and there isn’t a man in Ballymoy who’ll be more pleased to see your Excellency than he will.”
“I’m not His Excellency. My name is Blakeney, Lord Alfred Blakeney. I’m aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant, and I particularly want to see Dr. O’Grady.”
CHAPTER XIX
Lord Alfred Blakeney walked up the street and crossed the square with great dignity. He made no acknowledgment whatever of the cheers with which the people greeted him. They still thought that he was the Lord-Lieutenant, and, expectant of benefits of some sort, they shouted their best. He glanced at the veiled statue, but turned his eyes away from it immediately, as if it were something obscene or otherwise disgusting. He took no notice of Mary Ellen, though she smiled at him. Father McCormack and Doyle followed him, crestfallen. Major Kent, who seemed greatly pleased, also followed him. Half way across the square Lord Alfred Blakeney turned round and asked which was Dr. O’Grady. Father McCormack pointed him out with deprecating eagerness, much as a schoolboy with inferior sense of honour when himself in danger of punishment, points out to the master the real culprit. Lord Alfred Blakeney’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. His lips closed firmly. His whole face wore an expression of dignified severity, very terrible to contemplate. Dr. O’Grady seemed entirely unmoved.
“I’m delighted to see you,” he said, “though we expected the Lord-Lieutenant. By the way, you’re not the Lord-Lieutenant, are you, by any chance?”
“My name is Blakeney, Lord Alfred Blakeney.”
“I was afraid you weren’t,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Father McCormack and Doyle insisted that you were. But I knew that His Excellency must be a much older man. They couldn’t very well make anybody of your age Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, though I daresay you’d do very well, and deserve the honour quite as much as lots of people that get it.”
Lord Alfred Blakeney had been at Eton as a boy and at Christchurch, Oxford, afterwards as a young man. He was a Captain in the Genadier Guards, and he was aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. It seemed quite impossible that an Irish dispensary doctor could be trying to poke fun at him. He supposed that Dr. O’Grady was lamentably ignorant.