“Pass on, or let me pass, if you plase,” said one of the tenants; “and don’t be stopping the door-way.”
“I have business more nor you with the agent,” said the surveyor; “where is he?”
“In the presence-chamber,” replied another: “Where should the viceroy be but in the presence-chamber?”
There was a full levee, and fine smell of great coats.—“Oh! would you put your hats on the silk cushions?” said the widow to some men in the doorway, who were throwing off their greasy hats on a damask sofa.
“Why not? where else?”
“If the lady was in it, you wouldn’t,” said she, sighing.
“No, to be sure, I wouldn’t: great news! would I make no differ in the presence of Old Nick and my lady?” said he, in Irish. “Have I no sense or manners, good woman, think ye?” added he, as he shook the ink out of the pen on the Wilton carpet, when he had finished signing his name to a paper on his knee.
“You may wait long before you get to the speech of the great man,” said another, who was working his way through numbers.
They continued pushing forward, till they came within sight of Mr. Nicholas Garraghty, seated in state; and a worse countenance, or a more perfect picture of an insolent, petty tyrant in office, Lord Colambre had never beheld.
We forbear all further detail of this levee. “It’s all the same!” as Lord Colambre repeated to himself, on every fresh instance of roguery or oppression to which he was witness; and having completely made up his mind on the subject, he sat down quietly in the back-ground, waiting till it should come to the widow’s turn to be dealt with, for he was now interested only to see how she would be treated. The room gradually thinned I Mr. Dennis Garraghty came in, and sat down at the table, to help his brother to count the heaps of gold.