“I wouldn’t say he left so much at all,” said Jimmy cautiously. “And anyway it’s a servant that did be coming every day till to-day, and then it was some sort of a foreigner with a written order, him not being able to speak English.”
“Would you see your way to asking him for a subscription?”
“How would I do it, when he can’t know a word I say to him, nor him to me? Why won’t you talk sense?”
“And where’s the man himself, and the fellow that did speak English?”
“How would I know? If it’s a subscription you want from him, you’d better go over to Rosivera and ask for it.”
“They say,” said Patsy thoughtfully, “that he has plenty to give. A man like that with a motor car running on the road every day, and two foreign gentlemen, let alone an Englishman, to wait on him, must have a power of money. I wouldn’t wonder now, if I took him the right way, but he’d give five pounds. I might drop him a hint that five pounds is the least that any of the gentry would give to the sports.”
“Let you see what you can get out of him,” said Jimmy, “and the more the better.”
Jimmy had got all he wanted out of Patsy Devlin. He did not care very much whether Mr. Red subscribed to the sports or not. He took the whisky bottle and drove the cork home into its neck with a blow of his fist. Patsy looked regretfully at it, but he was a man of self-respect. He would neither ask for, nor hint that he wanted, a drink which his host did not seem inclined to offer him freely. He realized what the decisive blow given to the cork meant. There would be no more whisky for him unless he chose to go out to the bar and pay for it there in the usual way. This he was unwilling to do. Later on in the month, when the collection for the sports was complete, he might be in a position to spend lavishly; but for the present he felt it necessary to economize.
“It’ll be off with me,” he said. “It’ll be best, seeing I have to be up at the Castle early to-morrow. Later on in the day I might be going over to Rosivera to see what’s to be got out of the man that’s there. If he’s as rich as you’re after telling me he’ll never miss a pound, or for the matter of that five pound. I’ll have a try at him anyway.”