‘I’ve not been out of bed an hour, and I’d be there still, but the whisky gave out, and I kem here to wet my whistle.’
‘’Tis better ye should hear it from me than from another,’ said Conseltine, in the same tone of extreme caution. ‘My son here made a fool of himself this morning.’
‘Did he, now?’ returned Blake, with a laugh. ‘Sure his Creator did that for him twenty years ago.’
‘He had a row with the Squireen, young Desmond Macartney, and let out what he knew about his birth.’
‘’Tis the first time I knew that he knew anything about it,’ said Blake. ‘Was it you that trusted him with such a secret?’
‘Never mind how he came to know,’ returned Conseltine. ‘He learned the secret. Desmond provoked him, and he blurted it out before everybody—Lady Dulcie, my brother, Peebles and all.’
‘And he’s here to tell the tale?’ said Blake, with an air of drunken surprise. ‘Bedad, I’m a good man with my fists, but ’tis not I that would like to tell the Squireen that story.’
‘Listen! Listen!’ said Conseltine, beating the tops of his fingers on the table a little impatiently.
‘D’ye mean to sit there, Dick Conseltine,’ said Blake, ‘an’ tell me that that rip of a son o’ yours told the Squireen all that, and there was no fight?’
‘Devil a bit of a fight,’ answered Conseltine. ‘The boy was knocked clean out of time by the information. Well, when he came to, his lordship told him he’d acknowledge him before the world.’