“Whatever shall we do?” The despairing cry rang through her like a knell; a cold trembling seized her limbs, and she dropped helplessly into a chair.
“Has nothing come, Mary? Not even the meat for soup?”
“Sorra a sup, ma’am.”
“Cannot you think of something that can be made quickly? You told me you were a good hand at getting up nice dishes at short notice!”
The Celt’s pose was tragic.
“An’ it was a thrue word I spake, whin I said it. But an angel couldn’t make something out of nothing, or it’s meself that would thry!”
Matters were too serious for the poor lady to suffer her to smile at the implied assumption of angelic relationship.
“Something must be done, nevertheless,” she uttered, desperately, and, with a woman’s instinct of leaning upon rugged masculine strength when deserted by feminine wit, she sought the billiard-room, whither the inconsiderate brother had conducted his visitors, happily unsuspicious as themselves of the poverty-stricken larder, or the qualms that were racking the secretary of the interior.
He showed an exasperatingly good-humored face at the door in answer to her knock.
“Come in!” he said blithely, and would have flung wide the door, but for the agonized gesture that beckoned him into the entry.