"Well, that job's done at last," said he. "The room's clean and quiet, and we can't do better than take a twist at the cards. So let's have a pack, and play your best, d'ye mind."
This was addressed to Ashwoode, who, of course, acquiesced.
"Oh, bloody wars, I'm in for it," murmured Larry, "they'll be playin' here to no end, and I smothering fast, as it is; I'll never come out iv this pisition with my life."
Few situations could indeed be conceived physically more uncomfortable. A shelf projecting about midway pressed him forward, exerting anything but a soothing influence upon the backbone, so that his whole weight rested against the door of his narrow prison, and was chiefly sustained by his breast-bone and chin. In this very constrained attitude, and afraid to relieve his fatigue by moving even in the very slightest degree, lest some accidental noise should excite suspicion and betray his presence, the ill-starred squire remained; his discomforts still further enhanced by the pouring of some pickles, which had been overturned upon an upper shelf, in cool streams of vinegar down his back.
"I could not have betther luck," murmured he. "I never discoorsed a famale yet, but I paid through the nose for it. Didn't I get enough iv romance, bad luck to it, an' isn't it a plisint pisition I'm in at last—locked up in an ould cupboard in the wall, an' fairly swimming in vinegar. Oh, the women, the women. I'd rather than every stitch of cloth on my back, I walked out clever an' clane to meet the young masther, and not let myself be boxed up this way, almost dying with the cramps and the snuffication. Oh, them women, them women!"
Thus mourned our helpless friend in inarticulate murmurings. Meanwhile young Ashwoode opened two or three drawers in search of a pack of cards.
"There are several, I know, in that locker," said Ashwoode. "I laid some of them there myself."
"This one?" inquired Blarden, making the interrogatory by a sharp application of the head of his cane to the very panel against which Larry's chin was resting. The shock, the pain, and the exaggerated loudness of the application caused the inmate of the press, in spite of himself, to ejaculate,—
"Oh, holy Pether!"
"Did you hear anything queer?" inquired Blarden, with some consternation. "Anyone calling out?"