“You won’t be asked to do all that,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“I am being asked. You’re asking me this minute, and if I thought it would come off——”
“As you think it won’t you may as well join the committee.”
“I won’t be secretary,” said the Major, “and I won’t have hand, act, or part, in asking the Lord-Lieutenant to come here. We don’t want him, for one thing.”
“You’ll not be asked so much as to sign a paper,” said Dr. O’Grady. “If your name is required at the bottom of any document I’ll write it for you myself.”
“I wish to goodness,” said the Major, “that Billing—if that’s the man’s name—had stayed in America attending to his own business, whatever it is, instead of coming here and starting all this fuss. There’ll be trouble before you’ve done, O’Grady, more trouble than you care for. I wish to God it was all well over.”
Nothing is more gratifying to the prophet of evil than the fulfilment of his own prediction. When the fulfilment follows hard on the prophecy, when not more than half an hour separates them, the prophet ought to be a very happy man. This was Major Kent’s case. He foretold trouble of the most exasperating kind for Dr. O’Grady, and he was immediately justified by the event. Unfortunately he did not expect an immediate fulfilment of his words. Therefore he turned round in his chair and went to sleep again when the doctor left him. If he had been sanguine enough to expect that the doctor would be entangled in embarrassments at once, he would probably have roused himself. He would have followed Dr. O’Grady back to Ballymoy and would have had the satisfaction of gloating over the first of a long series of annoying difficulties. But the Major, though confident that trouble would come, had no hope that it would begin as soon as it did.
Dr. O’Grady was riding back to Ballymoy on his bicycle when he met Mrs. Ford, the wife of the stipendiary magistrate. She was walking briskly along the road which led out of the town. This fact at once aroused a feeling of vague uneasiness in the doctor’s mind. Mrs. Ford was a stout lady of more than fifty years of age. She always wore clothes which seemed, and probably were, much too tight for her. Her husband’s position and income entitled him to keep a pony trap, therefore Mrs. Ford very seldom walked at all. Dr. O’Grady had never before seen her walk quickly. It was plain, too, that on this occasion Mrs. Ford was walking for the mere sake of walking, a most unnatural thing for her to do. The road she was on led nowhere except to Major Kent’s house, several miles away, and it was quite impossible to suppose that she meant to call on him. She had, as Dr. O’Grady knew, quarrelled seriously with Major Kent two days earlier.
Dr. O’Grady, slightly anxious and very curious, got off his bicycle and approached Mrs. Ford on foot. He noticed at once that her face was purple in colour. It was generally red, and the unaccustomed exercise she was taking might account for the darker shade. Dr. O’Grady, arriving within a few yards of her, took off his hat very politely. The purple of Mrs. Ford’s face darkened ominously.
“Nice day,” said Dr. O’Grady. “How’s Mr. Ford?”