“If you speak the Irish to him he’ll answer you,” said Michael.
“I will, if he likes,” said the doctor. “But why won’t he speak English?”
“There’s a sort of dread on him,” said Michael Geraghty. “I think he’d be more willing to trust you if you’d speak to him in the Irish, it being all one to you. He bid me say to you, and it’s a good job I didn’t forget it, that if so be he’s dying, you might tell Father Henaghan he’s a Catholic, the way he’d attend on him; but if he’s to live, he’d as soon no one but yourself and me knew he was in the place.”
Dr. Whitty went up to the workhouse, turned the nurse out of the ward, and sat down beside Affy Hynes.
“Tell me this now,” he said, “why didn’t you let me know who you were? I wouldn’t have told on you.”
“I was sorry after that I didn’t,” said Affy, “when I seen all the trouble that I put you to. It was too much altogether fetching the ladies and gentlemen up here to be speaking to the like of me. It’s what never happened to me before, and I’m sorry you were bothered.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Sure, I did my best. Did you not see me winking at you once, when you had the priest and the minister in with me, as much as to say: ‘Doctor, if I thought I could trust you I’d tell you the truth this minute.’ I made full sure you’d understand what it was I was meaning the second time, even if you didn’t at the first go-off.”
“That’s not what I gathered from your wink at all,” said the doctor. “I thought you’d got some kind of a nervous affection of the eye.”