“Bother the children!” said Mr Fanshawe, thrusting the letter into the pocket of his shooting coat, and little dreaming what pleasant factors in the making of his fate those same children were to be.
He was rather fond of children, as a matter of fact, but he was in love, and he had been deciphering Lady Seagrave’s old-fashioned caligraphy in the hope of finding, like a flower in a wilderness, the magical name of Violet Lestrange.
“Do you know anything of Glen Druid House, near Tullagh, Micky?” he asked, as they trudged along together in the deepening twilight.
“Yes, sor,” replied Micky; “it’s be Castle Knock over beyant thim hills. It was Mr Moriarty’s in the ould days. The place went to rot an’ ruin whin the ould gintleman died, but they do be tellin’ me it’s changed hands to an ould lady from over the wather.”
“Is there good shooting?”
“Shutin’!” said Micky, speaking more from a desire to be amiable than from absolute knowledge. “Sure, it’s not a gun you’d want there at all, at all, for you could knock the cock phisints down wid your fist. Phisints! ay, be jabers! an’ woodcock an’ teal; and as for hares an’ rabbits, the groun’s is jumpin’ an’ runnin’ wid them.”
“If nothing better turns up,” said Mr Fanshawe to himself, “I’m not sure that I won’t accept the old girl’s invitation;” and ten days later, as you may have guessed from this preamble, he did.
CHAPTER II
PATSY
“Miss Kiligrew,” said little Lord Gawdor, looking up from his slate and the multiplication sum on it that wouldn’t come right.