“I must.”
“And your daddy said he’d skin you alive if you weren’t quick, did he?”
“He did.”
“Well, it’s I that’ll be skinnin’ you dead in two ticks if you don’t hould your whisht and be doin’ my bidding.”
“Ohone!” wailed Patsy.
“Whisht!” shouted Con.
Patsy became dumb. He would have darted off like a rabbit and tried to escape by running, only he was afraid of being brought to earth by Con’s blackthorn stick hurled after him, for Con was a terrible marksman, and he had been known a kill a pheasant thirty paces off with no other weapon than his deftly-flung stick.
“I’m not wishful to get you in trouble, Patsy,” said Con, “it’s not that I’m after; so I’ll just be walkin’ beside you on the way to Castle Knock, and I’ll give you the slip before we catch sight of the village, for there’s a policeman there I’m not wishful to meet, and it’s livin’ in an old tree I am to keep out of his way. What I want to ask you is, when are the quality comin’ to the Big House?”
“They’re comin’ before Chris’mas,” replied Patsy. “Lords and ladies and horses and bishop and all.”
“And who’s staying at the Big House now?”