"Is it likely I'd send him to you on a message? Oughtn't you to have more sense than to think I'd trust that one with a message? And wouldn't anybody that wasn't a born fool know that I didn't want the lamp upset over the dinner?"
"It was you told me to put the stuff the doctor was after giving you on the sheets of the gentleman's bed, and after the like of that was done on him, it wouldn't make much matter what other devilment he'd have to put up with. Sure there's nothing in the world worse on a man than a damp bed, and me after airing them sheets at the kitchen fire for the best part of the morning, so as no one would have it to say that they wasn't dry. If you didn't want him hunted out of the house, why did you bid me do that?"
Doyle felt the force of the argument; felt it more acutely than Sabina could guess. He himself, at the bidding of Meldon, had done much to make an honoured and profitable guest uncomfortable. Could he fairly blame Sabina for acting in a similar way with precisely the same excuse? He felt the necessity for speaking very sternly.
"Will you get out of this?" he said, "for I'm in dread but I might raise my hand to you if you stand there talking to me any more. You'd provoke the patience of a saint; but I wouldn't like to have it cast up to me after that ever I struck you."
"I'm going. You needn't think I'm wanting to stay. There's plenty will be glad to get me, and pay me more wages than ever you done."
Doyle recognised the truth of this. He had got Sabina cheap—cheap even by the standard of wages which prevails in Connacht. He felt half inclined to reconsider his determination. The judge was gone. The dismissal of Sabina, though a pleasant and satisfying form of vengeance, would not bring the lost three pounds back again; while there might be a good deal of trouble in getting another cook.
"Before I go," said Sabina, who did not want to go, and was watching Doyle's face for signs of relenting, "before I go I've a message to give you from Mr. Meldon."
"I seen him myself this morning," said Doyle, "and I don't know what there could be in the way of a message for me that he wouldn't have told me himself."
"What he bid me tell you was this—" Sabina paused. "Well now," she said, "if I haven't gone and forgot the name of the dog!"
"Was it a dog that a king killed one time," said Doyle, "on account of his thinking it had his baby ate?"