“What IS the thing? No wonder he doesn't drive up to the door and go in with it!”
“It is a HARP, as sure as I am alive!”
Then electrically from Francesca, “It is Patricia's Irish lover! I forget his name.”
“Rory!”
“Shamus!”
“Michael!”
“Patrick!”
“Terence!”
“Hush!” she exclaimed at this chorus of Hibernian Christian names, “it is Patricia's undeclared impecunious lover. He is afraid that she won't know his gift is a harp, and afraid that the other girls will. He feared to send it, lest one of the sisters or h'orphan nieces should get it; it is frightful to love one of six, and the cards are always slipping off, and the wrong girl is always receiving your love-token or your offer of marriage.”
“And if it is an offer, and the wrong woman gets it, she always accepts, somehow,” said Mr. Beresford; “It's only the right one who declines!” and here he certainly looked at me pointedly.