Mrs. O'Grady now gave a scream, and the girls and the housemaids joined in the chorus. Augusta bellowed from under the bed, "Mamma! mamma! indeed it's all Ratty—I never did it."
At this moment, to help the confusion, a fresh appearance made its way into the room; it was that of the Dowager O'Grady—arrayed in all the bygone finery of faded full-dress, and the tin chimney-pot on her head. "What is all this about?" she exclaimed, with an air of authority; "though my weathercock tells me the wind is nor'west, I did not expect such a storm. Is any one killed?"
"No," said O'Grady; "but somebody will be soon. Where are my pistols? Blood and fire! will nobody bring me my pistols?"
"Here they are, sir," said Handy Andy, running in.
O'Grady made a rush for the pistols, but his mother and his wife threw themselves before him, and Scatterbrain shoved Andy outside the room.
"Confound you, you numscull! would you give pistols into the hands of a frantic man?"
"Sure, he ax'd for them, sir."
"Go out o' this, you blockhead! Go and hide them somewhere, where your master won't find them."
Andy retired, muttering something about the hardness of a servant's case, in being scolded and called names for doing his master's bidding. Scatterbrain returned to the room, where the confusion was still in full bloom; O'Grady swearing between his mother and wife, while Furlong endeavoured to explain how the young lady happened to be in his room; and she kicking in hysterics amidst the maids and her sisters, while Scatterbrain ran to and fro between all the parties, giving an ear to Furlong, an eye to O'Grady, and smelling salts to his daughter.
The case was a hard one to a milder man than O'Grady—his speculation about Scatterbrain all knocked on the head, for it could not be expected he would marry the lady who had been found under another man's bed. To hush the thing up would be impossible, after the publicity his own fury had given to the affair. "Would she ever be married after such an affair was éclaté?" The question rushed into his head on one side, and the answer rushed in at the other, and met it with a plump "No!"—the question and answer then joined hands in O'Grady's mind, and danced down the middle to the tune of "Haste to the wedding!"