"You can if you like," Esther agreed, wiping her eyes with her muslin apron, which she had donned in honour of Mrs. Werner, "though for my part I do not care whether you are glad or sorry."
"Well, when I came here I was told to watch your mistress, and it has not been a pleasant occupation. I told Swanland it was all gammon thinking she was not on the square. Of course we know all about that, but he said his information from some one—Forde, I suppose, was clear, and that money was put away, and I must find out where. As if," added Mr. Meadows, with a gesture of ineffable contempt, "people like your people did not fight to the last shot, did not eat the last biscuit before surrendering. Of course I understand the whole thing, and I have but to repeat, so far as I am concerned, I am——glad they are gone."
"Let me pass, please," said Esther with a shudder. "I do not want to hear anything more about you or your master, or Mr. Forde—or—anybody," and her tone was so decided, he stepped aside and allowed her to pass without uttering another word.
CHAPTER XIII.
DOLLY WRITES A LETTER.
It may be questioned whether that particular member of the Mortomley family, who made ducks and drakes of the Dassell ancestral acres, felt anything like the grief at losing his patrimony which Archibald Mortomley endured when he stepped across the threshold of Homewood with the conviction strong upon him that he should return there no more.
Everything in this world is comparative. To lords temporal and spiritual, and to honourable gentlemen of the House of Commons, and to millionaires east of Temple Bar, that clinging of the Irish peasant to his mud cabin and couple of acres of bog, would seem a most ridiculous piece of foolery were it not for the bullets with which Patrick contrives to make such a tragedy out of his comical surroundings. Nevertheless, eviction means as much misery to the shiftless Hibernian as his cup is well capable of holding.
This is a fact, I think, we are all rather too apt to lose sight of when considering the extent of our neighbour's misfortunes.
Because the house is not grand, or the furniture nice, or the wife beautiful, or the children winning to our imaginations, we are apt to think the man's loss has been light to him.