“And she looks at you straight in the face,” said Jimmy, “the same as if she was trying to see what would be in the inside of your head, and feeling middling sure all the time that there wasn’t much in it, beyond the sweepings of the street.”
“It’s for her own good you’re doing it,” said Patsy.
There was some consolation in the thought. But Patsy, even while making the suggestion, felt that a good conscience is not always a sufficient support in well-doing.
“You might,” he added, “be out about the place and let herself talk to her till the worst of it was over.”
This plan, which perhaps would not have suited Mrs. O’Loughlin, commended itself to Jimmy; but it did not make him altogether comfortable about the future.
“I might,” he said, “and I will, but she’ll get me for sure at the latter end.”
If he had done as his conscience suggested, Patsy Devlin would have gone home at once after settling Miss Blow’s business for her. But the whisky bottle was still more than half full, and it seemed to him a pity to break up a pleasant party at an early hour. He started a fresh subject of conversation, one that he hoped would be interesting to his host.
“Tell me this now,” he said. “Do you think that fellow down at Rosivera, the same that brought the pianos along with him, would give a subscription to the sports?”
“I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “He’s queer. I never set eyes upon him myself since I finished carting the packing-cases down to Rosivera.”
“They tell me that he does be calling at your shop for his bread and the like, and leaving a power of money with you.”