“Buttons!” said Norah, laughing. “I’d like to see Mary Doody shorten a skirt with the aid of buttons. Anyhow, I’ve got to do it without the aid of pins, that’s evident. Come home, you unsympathetic frivollers!”
It was two days later, that, coming in late and ravenously hungry after a long tramp across the bog, the Lintons made a hurried toilet and a still more hurried descent to the dining-room. Dinner had been kept waiting for them, and they applied themselves to it with an energy born of a long day in the open air and a sandwich lunch. It was when the first edge of appetite had been taken off, and they were toying with a mammoth apple-pie, that Mrs. Moroney bore down upon them.
“I’m afraid we were very late, Mrs. Moroney,” said Mr. Linton.
“Ah, ’tis no matter,” said the lady of the house, waving away the suggestion. “In the heighth of the season there’s many a one roaring for dinner, and it ten o’clock at night. Did you enjoy your dinner, now?”
“We did, indeed,” said Mr. Linton; “it was most excellent pork——”
He stopped, catching Jim’s eye, into which had come a sudden light of comprehension.
“Pork!” said Jim faintly. “Yes, it was pork. Mrs. Moroney, . . . I wonder . . . did you . . . ?”
“Don’t tell me there was anything wrong with it,” said Mrs. Moroney, aflame in the defence of the pork. “I never see better pigs than them ones of Peter Grogan’s; and he after killing them only last Tuesday!”
CHAPTER X
THE ROCK OF DOON
“Hills o’ my heart!