“Yes, sir?” replied Patsy.
“What do you mean by not attending to my bell?”
“Attending to your which, sir?”
“My bell—are you deaf?”
“I didn’t know you’d brought one wid you, sir,” replied Patsy, with an air of injured innocence. “I was afther fetchin’ this water for Mr Fanshawe. Did yiz ring it in your room or in the passidge?”
“Good heavens!” cried Mr Boxall, “does the boy think I carry a bell about with me like a muffin man? My bedroom bell, you oaf!”
“Oh, your bidroom bell,” replied the servitor. “Sure, it’s ears as long as some people I could name I’d want to hear it, for it rings in the kitchen four flights of stairs and twinty-siven passidges away.”
“Hold your tongue,” replied Mr Boxall. “And now that you are here, go and fetch me my dressing-bag.”
“All your luggage is in your room, sir,” replied Patsy, “for I helped William, the under-gardner, with it.”
“Come here,” said Mr Boxall, smothering the resentment with which Patsy as the red-headed embodiment of the Irish race filled his Anglo-Saxon spirit. “Now stand in the doorway, stand fair and square and look around you, and—if you have eyes in your head—point me out my dressing-bag.”