“Is it Maggie your honor manes? Sure, there’s no finer quality of a mare in County Cork, if she only gets dacent encouragement.”
“Yes; but we ain’t got time to encourage her. Go and put her out, and hustle back here as quick as you can. I’ll pay you a good day’s wages. Hurry, now; we’ll go by train.”
The O’Mahony distributed small silver among the beggars the while he waited in front of the hotel.
“That laugh was worth a hundred dollars to me,” he said, more to himself than to the beggars. “I hain’t laughed before since Linsky spilt the molasses over his head.”
CHAPTER V.—THE INSTALLATION OF JERRY.
The visit to White & Carmody’s law-office had weighed heavily upon the mind of The O’Mahony during the whole voyage across the Atlantic, and it still was the burden of his thoughts as he sat beside Jerry Higgins—this he learned to be the car-driver’s name—in the train which rushed up the side of the Lea toward Cork. The first-class compartment to which Jerry had led the way was crowded with people who had arrived by the Moldavian, and who scowled at their late fellow-passenger for having imposed upon them the unsavory presence of the carman. The O’Mahony was too deeply occupied with his own business to observe this. Jerry smiled blandly into the hostile faces, and hummed a “come-all-ye” to himself.
When, an hour or so after their arrival, The O’Mahony emerged from the lawyers’ office the waiting Jerry scarcely knew him for the same man. The black felt hat, which had been pulled down over his brows, rested with easy confidence now well back on his head; his gray eyes twinkled with a pleasant light; the long face had lost its drawn lines and saturnine expression, and reflected content instead.
“Come along somewhere where we can get a drink,” he said to Jerry; but stopped before they had taken a dozen steps, attracted by the sign and street-show of a second-hand clothing shop. “Or no,” he said, “come in here first, and I’ll kind o’ spruce you up a bit so’t you can pass muster in society.”