"All right, then; I'm off. I'll be back within an hour. Don't forget you owe me a sovereign;" and he left the room.
CHAPTER XXV.
[THE "BLUE ANCHOR."]
The "Blue Anchor" was certainly not a place suited to the leisure moments of a respectable solicitor enjoying first-rate practice in an important town. It was small, low, dingy, blear-windowed, dilapidated. It stood in a little by-street, if a place like Kilcash can be said to have a by-street, since it has no main street or streets, all streets being in some way or another intimately connected with the Storm Wall, as the road inside that work was called.
The "Blue Anchor" has no pretensions to a "front." On one side of the door is a small, square window filled with small panes of unclean glass. The house is two storeys high; the ground-floor consists of three rooms--namely, the bar, tap-room, and kitchen. The floors of these three rooms are formed of beaten clay, and boast of neither straw nor sand.
Within the bar are a plain deal table and four chairs. By means of these, the bar is, for the sake of gentility, used as the family refectory, for people of any pretensions know that dining in the kitchen is a sign of low origin. Opposite the counter of the bar stands the door into the tap-room. Folk who are in haste can be served at the bar, but most of the customers of the "Blue Anchor" are strangers to haste, and take their liquor seated in the tap-room--or tap, as it is familiarly and affectionately called by those who are familiar with the place. It is about twelve feet square, with a large deal table in the middle, and a bench on each side of the table. At the upper end is a hearth, on which smoulders a good peat fire, the smoke from which goes up a large flue that comes down to within five feet of the floor like a huge funnel. Two short pieces of logs, the spoil of some wreck, serve as chimney-seats. The benches are of home-make, and very unsteady on their legs. The continual presence of beer seems to have muddled them as to the exact position of their centre of gravity; and this condition, combined with the deplorable unevenness of the floor, has made them despair of ever being able to find it out.
But the table is as firm as the Black Rock itself John Tobin, the landlord--an enormously fat man, in gaiters, knee-breeches, and a cutaway-coat--takes great pride in the invincible stability of that table. Whenever he is angered by anything, he goes into the tap-room, places his hands flat on the middle of the table, and gives two, three, or four shakes, according to the agitation of his feelings. Then he goes out to the front door, looks critically at the sky to seaward, comes back to the bar, and, having mopped his forehead, sighs, and is once more calm.
The wonder of every one in the village is how the "Blue Anchor" manages to live, and support John, his wife, and daughter. In summer the men are too busy to go often, except for a pint or two before retiring for the night; and in winter the men have very little or no money to spend.
When Jerry O'Brien reached the "Blue Anchor" he spoke a few cheerful words to John Tobin, whom every frequenter of Kilcash knew, told him he had run out from Kilbarry for the evening, with a view to seeing how things were in the village, and how things were likely to be there in the coming season. Jerry did not know exactly what the latter phrase could mean, but it sounded friendly, as though he took an interest in the place.
Old John instantly attached a definite meaning to his words, and said, with a smile: