"Who was the girl, I wonder?"
"God's sake, woman," cried the Speaker, "what does it matter who she was? Some Castletown huzzy, I suppose."
The peacocks were screaming again; they had been screaming for some time, and the front-door bell had been ringing, but in the hubbub nobody had heard them. But now the parlour-maid came to tell the Speaker that Mr. Daniel Collister of Baldromma was in the porch and asking to see him.
IV
Dan came into the room with his rolling walk, his eyes wild and dark, his billy-cock hat in his hand and his black hair 'strooked' flat across his forehead, where a wet brush had left it.
"Good evening, Mr. Spaker! You too, Mistress Gell! It's the twelfth to-morrow, but I thought I would bring my Hollantide rent to-day."
"Sit down," said the Speaker, who had given him meagre welcome.
Dan drew a chair up to a table, took from the breast pocket of his monkey-jacket a bulging parcel in a red print handkerchief (looking like a roadman's dinner), untied the knots of it, and disclosed a quantity of gold and silver coins, and a number of Manx bank notes creased and soiled. These he counted out with much deliberation amid a silence like that which comes between thunderclaps—the Speaker, standing by the fireplace, coughing to compose himself, his wife blowing her nose to get rid of her tears, and no other sounds being audible except the nasal breathing of Dan Baldromma, who had hair about his nostrils.
"Count it for yourself; I belave you'll find it right, Sir."
"Quite right. I suppose you'll want a receipt?"