The girls felt a good deal disappointed, but they were the sort of young people who kept their feelings to themselves. They marched about the town and peeped into Barry's shop and entered and bought yards upon yards of pale blue ribbon, which they desired the man to put down to the Reverend Patrick O'Brien, as they were his daughters.
Presently they found themselves on Patrick's Quay, which was now packed and crowded with eager spectators. The greatest yacht-race of the season was about to come off. The Sea Foam, a magnificent yacht, belonging to the Earl of Banbury, was to compete against the Sea Sprite, a local yacht belonging to a Mr. Jagoe.
Excitement had risen to its extreme height. All the population wanted Jagoe's yacht to win, but the Sea Foam out-did her with the utmost ease, flying gracefully like a bird over the bosom of the waters, out of the inner harbour into the outer and then back again, beating the Sea Sprite by a matter of at least ten minutes. The Sea Sprite came to her anchorage looking dull and dusty, with her sails torn, for the wind had got up a good bit; but the Sea Foam lay like a white swan, calm and at rest on the waters.
The great races were followed by little races, sailing boats and row-boats and canoe races. The whole scene was most brilliant and charming, and every girl in the place put on all the finery she possessed, and all the men members of the yachting club were in white flannels. Nobody spoke to Henrietta or to Daisy, though the chemist approached them once and said, "Have ye got that there rat-pison?" but Henrietta in the midst of her present surroundings, threw up her head in extreme haughtiness and said: "Sir, I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance."
"Driscoll by name, and Cautious by nature," replied the chemist. He then turned and said something to his companion, a pretty little girl of his own class. They both looked at the Misses Mostyn, and both laughed loudly, and Henrietta and Daisy thought it as well to start on their homeward way.
As they were approaching the Rectory, Daisy said in a low voice, which she could assume at will and which certainly the groom could not hear, "I have a notion in my head, Henny-penny!"
"What is that, Daisy? To tell the truth, I'm about tired of your notions. They never come to anything at all."
"Well, but this one will—this one will," said Daisy, skipping up and down in the phaeton as she spoke. "Don't you remember what that horrid man Driscoll said—that he had sold rat-poison to mumsie some time ago; so there must have been rats once at Templemore. He said also, of course, that naturally mumsie pumsie would destroy the poison when the rats were gone—but I'm by no means so sure of that. It was not a bit the way of the careless old duck."
"Well?" said Henrietta.
"Well, what I'm thinking is this: that we have got to find what is left of the rat-poison."