“Jimmy O’Loughlin,” said Lord Manton, “Mr. Goddard is sending a couple of police over to Rosivera to see if there’s any news there of the gentlemen that have got lost, and he doesn’t want Miss Blow to go with them. Can you think of any way of stopping her?”
“Her mind’s made up to go,” said Mr. Goddard.
Jimmy meditated on the problem.
“If so be,” he said at last, “that I could get the boots off of her, and had them hid in the haggard where she wouldn’t find them easy, she couldn’t go.”
“She could not,” said Mr. Goddard. “But how do you propose to get them off her?”
“I was thinking,” said Jimmy, “that if his lordship here would draw down the subject of boots, and was to say that all boots was the better of being cleaned, and then if I was to say that Bridgy was doing nothing particular and would be glad to give a rub to any lady’s boots that liked, that maybe she’d take them off herself.”
“If that’s the best you can do in the way of a suggestion,” said Mr. Goddard, “you might as well have kept it to yourself. Is it likely she’d take off her boots at this hour of the day to please you?”
“It wouldn’t be to please me,” said Jimmy; “it would be his lordship that would ask her at the latter end.”
“I’m afraid,” said Lord Manton, “she wouldn’t do it for me. She doesn’t like me. You’d think she would, but as a matter of fact she doesn’t.”
“How would it be,” said Jimmy, “if I was to have a telegram for her? The young lady that minds the post-office is a niece of my own. It might be in it that it was from the doctor himself and came from New York. That would turn her mind away from the police.”