CHAPTER V
Miss Blow came back for her luncheon, and then, asking no more help or advice from Jimmy O’Loughlin, went out and made her way to Dr. O’Grady’s house. It stood a few hundred yards from the village in the middle of a small field. Miss Blow knocked and rang at the door, though she had no real expectation of its being opened to her. She walked round the house and peered in at the windows. The rooms on the ground floor showed every sign of having been recently occupied by a person of untidy habits. She reached the yard, surveyed the coach house and the stable which had once sheltered a good horse. She tried the kitchen door and found it bolted against her. The kitchen had a disused and neglected appearance which puzzled her. She returned to the front of the house and sat down on a stone to think out the position in which she found herself.
Patsy Devlin, who had followed her from the hotel, watched her proceedings from a distance with great interest. He afterwards made a report to Jimmy O’Loughlin, a masterly report which interpreted her actions, and added a picturesque touch at the end. Patsy Devlin would have written good histories if fortune had made him a university professor instead of a blacksmith.
“You’d have been sorry for the creature,” he said, “if you’d seen her sitting there on a lump of a stone with the tears running down the two cheeks of her the same as if you were after beating her with a stick.”
“I am sorry for her,” said Jimmy. “It’s herself has her own share of trouble before her when she finds out that the doctor’s off to America without so much as leaving word for her to go after him.”
It did not seem likely that Miss Blow would easily arrive at a knowledge of the full extent of her misery. Biddy Halloran, the rheumatic old lady who had waited long on the roadside for the doctor in the morning, was still lurking near the house when Miss Blow reached it. She, like Patsy Devlin, watched the examination of the premises with deep interest. When Miss Blow sat down on the stone, Biddy Halloran hobbled up to her.
“Is it the doctor you’re looking for?” she said. “For if it is, it’s hardly ever you’ll see him again.”
Miss Blow was startled, and demanded an explanation of the words. Biddy, who was slightly deaf, pretended to be very deaf indeed. Miss Blow’s clear voice and determination of manner subdued her in the end. She professed to be the only person in Clonmore who really knew what had happened to the doctor.
“Holidays, is it?” she said, recollecting what Patsy Devlin had told her, “no, nor work either. It’s to Dublin he’s gone, and it’s little pleasure he’ll find there. Och, but he was a fine man and it’s a pity of him!”