“Yes—but where the devil is that law-office?”
“Sure, your honor, there’s no such names here at all,” the carman replied, pleasantly. “Here’s the hotel where gintleman stop, an’ I’ve shown ye the view from the top, an’ it’s plased I am ye had such a clear day for it—and wud ye like to see Smith-Barry’s place, after lunch?”
The stranger turned round on his seat to the better comment upon this amazing impudence, beginning a question harsh of purpose and profane in form.
Then the spectacle of the ragged driver’s placidly amiable face and roguish eye; of the funny old horse, like nothing so much in all the world as an ancient hair-trunk with legs at the corners, yet which was driven with the noise and ostentation of a six-horse team; of the harness tied up with ropes; the tumble-down car; the broken whip; the beggars—all this, by a happy chance, suddenly struck The O’Mahony in a humorous light. Even as his angered words were on the air he smiled in spite of himself. It was a gaunt, reluctant smile, the merest curling of the lips at their corners; but it sufficed in a twinkling to surround him with beaming faces. He laughed aloud at this, and on the instant driver and beggars were convulsed with merriment.
The O’Mahony jumped off the car.
“I’ll run into the hotel and find out where I want to go,” he said. “Wait here.”
Two minutes passed.
“These lawyers live in Cork,” he explained on his return. “It seems this is only Queenstown. I want you to go to Cork with me.”
“Right, your honor,” said the driver, snapping his whip in preparation.
“But I don’t want to drive; it’s too much like a funeral. We ain’t a-buryin’ anybody.”