Eily paused, fairly out of breath, just as Mrs. O'Shaughnessy entered, bringing her rather scanty supper. There was quite a pile of jewels in her lap and about her feet, while a good many had rolled to a distance; but her heart sank within her as she compared the result of three hours' steady talking with the end to which the rapacious doctor aspired.
She was allowed to eat her supper in peace, but no sooner was it finished than the questioning began again, and it was not until ten o'clock had struck that the exhausted child was allowed to lay her head down on the rude bed which Mrs. O'Shaughnessy had hastily made up for her.
The next day was a weary one for poor Eily. From morning till night she was obliged to talk incessantly, with only a brief space allowed for her meals. The doctor and his wife mounted guard by turns, each asking questions, until to the child's fancy they seemed like nothing but living interrogation points. All day long, no matter what she was talking about,—the potato-crop, or the black hen that the fox stole, or Phelim's measles,—her mind was fixed on one idea, that of escaping from her prison. If only some fortunate chance would call them both out of the room at once! But, alas! that never happened. There was always a pair of greedy eyes fixed on her, and on the now hated jewels which dropped in an endless stream from her lips; always a harsh voice in her ears, rousing her, if she paused for an instant, by new questions as stupid as they were long.
Once, indeed, the child stopped short, and declared that she could not and would not talk any more; but she was speedily shown the end of a birch rod, with the hint that the doctor "would be loth to use the likes av it on Dinnis Macarthy's choild; but her parints had given him charge to dhrive out the witchcraft be hook or be crook; and av a birch rod wasn't first cousin to a crook, what was it at all?" and Eily was forced to find her powers of speech again.
By nightfall of this day the room was ankle-deep in pearls and diamonds. A wonderful sight it was, when the moon looked in at the window, and shone on the lustrous and glittering heaps which Mrs. O'Shaughnessy piled up with her broom. The woman was fairly frightened at the sight of so much treasure, and she crossed herself many times as she lay down on the mat beside Eileen's truckle-bed, muttering to herself, "Michael knows bist, I suppose; but sorrow o' me if I can feel as if there was a blissing an it, ava'!"
The third day came, and was already half over, when an urgent summons came for Doctor O'Shaughnessy. One of his richest patrons had fallen from his horse and broken his leg, and the doctor must come on the instant. The doctor grumbled and swore, but there was no help for it; so he departed, after making his wife vow by all the saints in turn, that she would not leave Eileen's side for an instant until he returned.
When Eily heard the rattle of the gig and the sound of the pony's feet, and knew that the most formidable of her jailers was actually gone, her heart beat so loud for joy that she feared its throbbing would be heard. Now, at last, a loop-hole seemed to open for her. She had a plan already in her head, and now there was a chance for her to carry it out. But an Irish girl of ten has shrewdness beyond her years, and no gleam of expression appeared in Eileen's face as she spoke to Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, who had been standing by the window to watch her husband's departure, and who now returned to her seat.
"We'll be missin' the docthor this day, ma'm, won't we?" she said. "He's so agrayable, ain't he, now?"
"He is that!" replied Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, with something of a sigh. "He's rale agrayable, Michael is—whin he wants to be," she added. "Yis, I'll miss um more nor common to-day, for 'tis worn out I am intirely wid shlapin so little these two nights past. Sure, I can't shlape, wid thim things a-shparklin' an' a-glowerin' at me the way they do; and now I'll not get me nap at all this afthernoon, bein' I must shtay here and kape ye talkin' till the docthor cooms back. Me hid aches, too, mortial bad!"
"Do it, now?" said Eily, soothingly. "Arrah, it's too bad, intirely! Will I till ye a little shtory that me grandmother hed for the hidache?"