"Sartinly, sir;—but I think, if you'd let me just——"
"Give it to me, I tell you!" said the squire, in a tone so fierce that the nurse paused in her unfolding of the packet, and handed it with fear and trembling to the already indignant O'Grady. But it is only imagination can figure the outrageous fury of the squire, when, on opening the envelope with his own hand, he beheld the law process before him. There, in the heart of his castle, with his bars, and bolts, and bull-dogs, and blunderbusses round him, he was served—absolutely served,—and he had no doubt the nurse-tender was bribed to betray him.
A roar and a jump up in bed, first startled his wife into terror, and put the nurse on the defensive.
"You infernal old strap!" shouted he, as he clutched up a handful of bottles on the table near him and flung them at the nurse, who was near the fire at the time; and she whipped the pot of gruel from the grate, and converted it into a means of defence against the phial-pelting storm.
Mrs. O'Grady rolled herself up in the bed-curtains, while the nurse screeched "murther!" and at last, when O'Grady saw that bottles were of no avail, he scrambled out of bed, shouting, "Where's my blunderbuss?" and the nurse-tender, while he endeavoured to get it down from the rack, where it was suspended over the mantelpiece, bolted out of the door, which she locked on the outside, and ran to the most remote corner of the house for shelter.
In the mean time, how fared it at Merryvale? Andy returned with his parcel for the squire, and his note from Murtough Murphy, which ran thus:
"My dear squire.—I send you the blister for O'Grady, as you insist on it; but I think you won't find it easy to serve him with it.
"Your obedient and obliged, "Murtough Murphy." "To Edward Egan, Esq. Merryvale."
The squire opened the cover, and when he saw a real instead of a figurative blister, grew crimson with rage. He could not speak for some minutes, his indignation was so excessive. "So!" said he, at last, "Mr. Murtough Murphy—you think to cut your jokes with me, do you? By all that's sacred! I'll cut such a joke on you with the biggest horsewhip I can find, that you'll remember it. 'Dear squire, I send you the blister.' Bad luck to your impidence! Wait till awhile ago—that's all. By this and that, you'll get such a blistering from me that all the spermaceti in M'Grane's shop won't cure you."