I found it difficult to connect these coquetries with my impressions of my late kitchenmaid, a furtive and touzled being, who, in conjunction with a pail and scrubbing brush, had been wont to melt round corners and into doorways at my approach.
“Are we trying a breach of promise?” interpolated Flurry; “if so, we ought to have the plaintiff in.”
“My purpose, sir,” said Mr. Mooney, in a manner discouraging to levity, “is to show that my clients have received annoyance and contempt from this man and his sister such as no parents would submit to.”
A hand came forth from under the gallery and plucked at Mr. Mooney’s coat. A red monkey face appeared out of the darkness, and there was a hoarse whisper, whose purport I could not gather. Con Brickley, the defendant, was giving instructions to his lawyer.
It was perhaps as a result of these that Jer Keohane’s evidence closed here. There was a brief interval enlivened by coughs, grinding of heavy boots on the floor, and some mumbling and groaning under the gallery.
“There’s great duck-shooting out on a lake on this island,” commented Flurry to me, in a whisper. “My grand-uncle went there one time with an old duck-gun he had, that he fired with a fuse. He was three hours stalking the ducks before he got the gun laid. He lit the fuse then, and it set to work spluttering and hissing like a goods-engine till there wasn’t a duck within ten miles. The gun went off then.”
This useful side-light on the matter in hand was interrupted by the cumbrous ascent of the one-legged Con Brickley to the witness-table. He sat down heavily, with his slouch hat on his sound knee, and his wooden stump stuck out before him. His large monkey face was immovably serious; his eye was small, light grey, and very quick.
McCaffery, the opposition attorney, a thin, restless youth, with ears like the handles of an urn, took him in hand. To the pelting cross-examination that beset him Con Brickley replied with sombre deliberation, and with a manner of uninterested honesty, emphasising what he said with slight, very effective gestures of his big, supple hands. His voice was deep and pleasant; it betrayed no hint of so trivial a thing as satisfaction when, in the teeth of Mr. McCaffery’s leading questions, he established the fact that the “little rod” with which Miss Kate Keohane had beaten his wife was the handle of a pitch-fork.
“I was counting the fish the same time,” went on Con Brickley, in his rolling basso profundissimo, “and she said, ‘Let the divil clear me out of the sthrand, for there’s no one else will put me out!’ says she.”
“It was then she got the blow, I suppose!” said McCaffery, venomously; “you had a stick yourself, I daresay?”