“Perhaps, now, you’d be better going back to meet him when you have the horse stabled,” suggested his mistress. “I wouldn’t have the luggage delayed.”
“Ah, sure, it will be all right,” said Mr. Burke, hastily, “John Conolly’s not that bad; he’ll get it here sometime, but where’d be the use of hurrying the ass? Well, I’ll throw a look down the road when I’m after putting the car by, ma’am.”
“And that makes sure of me poor Brownie getting a good grooming,” murmured the landlady, ushering her guests into the house as the car jogged stablewards. “Patsy’s not that fond of a walk that he’d scamp his job to be travelling the road after John Conolly. Are you there, Bridget?”
“I am, ma’am,” said a pretty girl, appearing from the back of the hall with such swiftness as to compel the belief that she had been surreptitiously observing the new-comers.
“Take the gentlemen to their rooms,” commanded the landlady. “Will you come with me, Miss Linton?”
Norah followed her up the broad staircase. A wide corridor led through mouldering archways, whence passages branched off to right and left. The walls bore signs of decorations of a bygone day, now faint and faded with age. The landlady threw open the door of a large room, with two windows looking over the lough. A huge bed occupied an alcove: bare acreages of floor intervened between isolated pieces of furniture, with rugs lying, like islands, on the stained boards.
“I took up the carpet—’twas old and there were holes in it you’d fall through,” said the landlady. “But I could put you in a smaller room if you’d rather have a carpet.”
“I like this,” Norah said, looking round the clean bareness of the room. “But can’t I have the windows open?”
“You’ll have to fight Bridget over them,” replied the landlady, flinging both windows wide. “I opened them twice this morning, but she shut them again; and the second time she was so anxious about all the deaths you’d be dying with the dint of the cold blast sweeping in, that I let them stay.”
“I didn’t think there was any cold blast,” Norah said laughing.