“There it is, sir,” said Patsy, pointing to the dressing-bag, which was standing in a shady corner, with a travelling rug half covering it.
“Get out!” said Mr Boxall. He shut the door in the red-headed one’s face, and Patsy took up his can of hot water.
“I’ll be even wid yiz yet, ould glass eyes!” said Patsy, as he carried the can towards Mr Fanshawe’s room.
Mr Fanshawe had not yet returned from the chase. Patsy put the hot water can down by the wash-stand, and then looked around to see what more he could do. Patsy in a few hours had attached himself to Mr Fanshawe just as a dog attaches himself to a man. He would have gone through fire and water for Mr Fanshawe, but as that was not required of him, he expended his energy in the polishing of his boots and the brushing of his clothes.
Having looked around and seen that everything was trim, he went downstairs to help James, the butler. Half an hour afterwards, coming up the main staircase on some errand and hearing the swish of silk, he glanced up and caught a glimpse of a spacious and portly dame descending the stairs. It was Lady Molyneux in all her glory—low evening dress, tiara of diamonds, necklace of diamonds, bracelets and all.
Lady Molyneux, with rather questionable taste, invariably put on all her diamonds for dinner. She looked like a jeweller’s shop in motion, and Patsy, alarmed at having to face so much magnificence, popped himself behind the arras on the landing.
The arras was old and dusty and smelt of rats; it was a bit tattered, too, and through a hole in it Patsy watched Lady Molyneux pass by, and gasped at the magnificence of the spectacle.
The remembrance of Paddy Murphy came to him with a cold chill; to-night, to-morrow night, any night now the knock might come to the window and he would be bound to open it. He stood reviewing this frightful certainty and watching the back view of Lady Molyneux as she descended the stairs. The thought which had been comforting him for some days past, that, though he had sworn to open the window for the burglars he had not sworn not to tell, came to him, coupled with the recollection of Mr Fanshawe’s guns.
He was just on the point of leaving his hiding-place when the sound of some one else descending the stairs made him pause. It was Miss Lestrange, looking very beautiful in a black evening dress, and with a rose worn Spanish fashion in the clouds of her dark hair.
Patsy was gazing in admiration at this beautiful vision which was descending towards him when a hurried step coming up the stairs was heard. It was Dicky Fanshawe, plastered with mud from top to toe; he was coming up the stairs two steps at a time. His left coat sleeve was nearly ripped out of the coat, and his face was a mask of mud. He had come a barbed wire cropper, and had been bogged beyond Shepherd’s Cross; but he did not seem hurt, and he did not seem particularly depressed with his misfortunes, for he was whistling a tune, and he had nearly cannoned against Miss Lestrange before he saw her.