“Ah, well!” said Peggy. She drew a long breath. Suddenly the tears rose brimming up to her eyes. “I don’t like to think that he is in the ground,” she said. “Did they lay him out proper—at a wake, belike?”
“I don’t think so, my child. He died in India of fever.”
“Faver, was it? It’s a mighty cruel thing is faver.”
“Yes, Peggy; and before he died he wrote me a letter. He has given you to me.”
“What!”
“Yes, you must come with me, my child; I want to be a father to you.”
The girl looked at him. Up to the present she had scarcely taken in his words; now her face turned white and the tears dropped fast from her eyes. She said, “Hould a bit! whist, for the Lord’s sake!” and rushed into the cabin.—“Biddy O’Flynn! Biddy O’Flynn!” she cried, “come along—ye and Patrick—this blessed minute. There’s a gintleman mightiness from foreign parts come to say that me father’s dead, an’—oh glory!—never waked at all, at all; nothing done proper for his sowl. And me here to go away wid his highness. I won’t! I won’t! Biddy, ye won’t let me go, will ye?”
A blear-eyed, very ancient woman rose from her seat by the fireside. She was smoking a short black pipe, and came out presently into the sunshine to stare at the stranger. She was followed by her husband, a little crooked man, who limped, and supported himself on a crutch.
“Now, my good people,” said Wyndham, “I have come to fetch Miss Desmond. Her poor father, Captain Desmond, is dead, and has put her into my charge. I want to catch the next train to Dublin, and will take her with me. You have been very kind to her, and I am prepared to pay you handsomely for your services.”
“Never a bit o’ money I’ll take for the colleen,” answered Patrick O’Flynn.