“There isn’t one about the place,” said Jimmy, “that’s better acquainted with the old earl up at the Castle than yourself. He thinks a deal of you, and well he may.”
“He gave me a letter,” said Patsy, “at the time of the election. But it’s little heed you or the rest of them paid to it.”
Jimmy was anxious to avoid the subject of the election.
“I’m told,” he said, “that whatever you might ask of him, he’d do.”
Patsy was susceptible to flattery of this kind.
“He always thought a deal of me and my father before me,” he said. “You could tell the opinion he had of me by the letter he wrote. And why wouldn’t he when either my father or myself put the shoes on every horse that’s come and gone from the Castle this fifty years.”
“I could tell what he thought of you,” said Jimmy. “Sure anybody could.”
“You could tell it, if so be you read the letter.”
“The doctor’s young lady,” said Jimmy, “is going up to see the earl to-morrow. The Lord save her! but she’s half distracted with grief this minute.”
“And what good will going to the Castle do her? Sure he doesn’t know where the doctor is no more than another.”