“You must lend me a pair of boots, Kelly!” said Murtough.
“To be sure, sir—ha! ha! ha!—but you are the quare man, Misther Murphy—”
“Send down the road and get my gig out of the ditch.”
“To be sure, sir. Poor devils! purty hands they got into,” and off went the landlord, with a chuckle.
The messengers sent for the gig returned, declaring there was no gig to be seen anywhere.
Murphy affected great surprise at the intelligence—again went among the bamboozled electors, who were all obliged to go to bed for want of clothes; and his bitter lamentations over the loss of his gig almost reconciled them to their minor troubles.
To the fears they expressed that they should not be able to reach the town in time for polling that day, Murphy told them to set their minds at rest, for they would be in time on the next.
He then borrowed a saddle as well as the pair of boots from the landlord, and the little black mare bore Murphy triumphantly back to the town, after he had securely impounded Scatterbrain's voters, who were anxiously and hourly expected by their friends. Still they came not. At last, Handy Andy, who happened to be in town with Scatterbrain, was despatched to hurry them, and his orders were not to come back without them.
Handy, on his arrival at the inn, found the electors in bed, and all the fires in the house employed in drying their clothes. The little man, wrapped in a blanket, was superintending the cooking of his own before the kitchen grate; there hung his garments on some cross sticks suspended by a string, after the fashion of a roasting-jack, which the small gentleman turned before a blazing turf fire; and beside this contrivance of his swung a goodly joint of meat, which a bouncing kitchen wench came over to baste now and then.
Andy was answering some questions of the inquisitive little man, when the kitchen maid, handing the basting-ladle to Andy, begged him to do a good turn and just to baste the beef for her, for that her heart was broke with all she had to do, cooking dinner for so many.