Andy fumbled in his pockets, and could not lay hold of the paper his mistress entrusted him with, until he had emptied them thoroughly of their contents upon the counter of the shop; and then, taking the prescription from the collection, he said, "So you tell me I don't know the description of the physic I'm to get. Now, you see, you're out; for that's the description!" and he slapped the counter impressively with his hand as he threw down the recipe before the apothecary.
While the medicine was in the course of preparation for Andy, he commenced restoring to his pockets the various parcels he had taken from them in hunting for the recipe. Now, it happened that he had laid them down close beside some articles that were compounded, and sealed up for going out, on the apothecary's counter: and as the law process which Andy had received from Murtough Murphy chanced to resemble in form another inclosure that lay beside it, containing a blister, Andy, under the influence of his peculiar genius, popped the blister into his pocket instead of the package which had been confided to him by the attorney, and having obtained the necessary medicine from M'Garry, rode home with great self-complacency that he had not forgot to do a single thing that had been entrusted to him. "I'm all right this time," said Andy to himself.
Scarcely had he left the apothecary's when another messenger alighted at its door, and asked "If Squire O'Grady's things was ready?"
"There they are," said the innocent M'Garry, pointing to the bottles, boxes, and blister, he had made up and set aside, little dreaming that the blister had been exchanged for a law process: and Squire O'Grady's own messenger popped into his pocket the legal instrument that it was as much as any seven men's lives were worth to bring within gunshot of Neck-or-nothing Hall.
Home he went, and the sound of the old gate creaking on its hinges at the entrance of the avenue awoke the deep-mouthed dogs around the house, who rushed infuriate to the spot to devour the unholy intruder on the peace and privacy of the patrician O'Grady; but they recognised the old grey hack and his rider, and quietly wagged their tails and trotted back, and licked their lips at the thoughts of the bailiff they had hoped to eat. The door of Neck-or-nothing Hall was carefully unbarred and unchained, and the nurse-tender was handed the parcel from the apothecary's, and re-ascended to the sick room with slippered foot as quietly as she could; for the renowned O'Grady was, according to her account, "as cross as two sticks;" and she protested, furthermore, "that her heart was grey with him."
Whenever O'Grady was in a bad humour, he had a strange fashion of catching at some word that either he himself, or those with whom he spoke, had uttered, and after often repeating it, or rather mumbling it over in his mouth, as if he were chewing it, off he started into a canter of ridiculous rhymes to the aforesaid word, and sometimes one of these rhymes would suggest a new idea, or some strange association which had the oddest effect possible; and to increase the absurdity, the jingle was gone through with as much solemnity as if he were indulging in a deep and interesting reverie, so that it was difficult to listen without laughing, which might prove a serious matter when O'Grady was in one of the tantarums, as his wife used to call them.
Mrs. O'Grady was near the bed of the sick man as the nurse-tender entered.
"Here's the things for your honour, now," said she, in her most soothing tone.
"I wish the d——l had you and them!" said O'Grady.
"Gusty, dear!" said his wife. (She might have said stormy instead of gusty.)