The attorney, thunderstruck by this Hibernian impetuosity, had not yet found time to take his pen out of his mouth. As he sat transfixed in his arm-chair, O’Reilly ran to the head of the stairs, and called out in a stentorian voice, “Here, you Mr. Owen ap Jones; come up and be paid off this instant, or you shall never be paid at all.”
Up stairs hobbled the old schoolmaster, as fast as the gout and Welsh ale would let him. “Cot pless me, that voice,” he began—
“Where’s your bond, sir?” said the attorney.
“Safe here, Cot be praised,” said the terrified Owen ap Jones, pulling out of his bosom, first a blue pocket-handkerchief, and then a tattered Welsh grammar, which O’Reilly kicked to the farther end of the room.
“Here is my bond,” said he, “in the crammer,” which he gathered from the ground; then fumbling over the leaves, he at length unfolded the precious deposit.
O’Reilly saw the bond, seized it, looked at the sum, paid it into the attorney’s hands, tore the seal from the bond; then, without looking at old Jones, whom he dared not trust himself to speak to, he clapped his hat upon his head, and rushed out of the room. Arrived at the King’s Bench prison, he hurried to the apartment where Edwards was confined. The bolts flew back; for even the turnkeys seemed to catch our hero’s enthusiasm.
“Edwards, my dear boy! how do you do? Here’s a bond debt, justly due to you for my education. Oh, never mind asking any unnecessary questions; only just make haste out of this undeserved abode: our old rascal is paid off—Owen ap Jones, you know.—Well, how the man stares! Why, now, will you have the assurance to pretend to forget who I am? and must I spake,” continued he, assuming the tone of his childhood, “and must I spake to you again in my ould Irish brogue before you will ricollict your own little Dominick?”
When his friend Edwards was out of prison, and when our hero had leisure to look into business, he returned to the attorney to see that Mr. Owen ap Jones had been legally satisfied.
“Sir,” said the attorney, “I have paid the plaintiff in this suit; and he is satisfied: but I must say,” added he, with a contemptuous smile, “that you Irish gentlemen are rather in too great a hurry in doing business: business, sir, is a thing that must be done slowly to be done well.”
“I am ready now to do business as slowly as you please; but when my friend was in prison, I thought the quicker I did his business the better. Now tell me what mistake I have made, and I will rectify it instantly.”