"Well, I hope so; but, father, I'll be off before Sunday, and this is Wednesday."
"You'll have lashins of time, Tom; but the sorra wan but I'll be very lonely; for although, Tom, you do be wandhering from home by day, and stopping out late sometimes by night, sure I know you're not far off, an' I always hear you lettin' yourself in betune night an' mornin'. Though Caesar doesn't bark at you, I hear him whinin' an' shufflin' when you're coming to the back doore?"
"No matter about that now, father; I suppose I can get the money tomorrow or after, and start for my aunt's?"
"Any minute, Tom. I'm never without a bill-stamp in the house in regard of the fairs. Come in, and I'll dhraw it out at wanst, an' I'll engage they'll give you the money on it at the bank; don't be the laste taste aleared of that, Tom."
Whether Tom then intended to be guided by his father's advice, and not go past his aunt's in Armagh, it is not easy to say; but at all events he "let on" that he would not do so. When he got his heels loose, with a trifle of cash in his pocket, he could turn his steps in any direction he wished.
They then returned to the house, and old Mick, putting on his spectacles, opened a table-drawer in the parlor, where he kept his writing materials, accounts, receipts, etc. After some discussion, which had well-nigh ended in an argument, as to whether the amount should be twenty or thirty pounds, a bill was ultimately drawn by the son upon the father for the former sum, at three months. Tom had, other reasons than the mere increase of ten pounds in the amount, for wishing to have the word thirty instead of twenty written in the bill; however, he could not screw more than the latter sum out of the old man, which he said was ample to take him to his aunt's in Armagh, where he'd get lashins an' lavins of the best of everything. Tom knew that for this purpose it would be ample, and therefore failed to bring forward any arguments to sustain his view as to the necessity of making it thirty; but as it was he himself who wrote it out, he patted the blotting-paper over it in great haste—a matter which was not, of course, observed by the old man, nor if it had been would he have supposed there was anything unusual, much less for a purpose, in the act. The father having read it carefully over, and seeing that it was all correct, wrote his name with some dignity of manner across the bill. This portion of the writing Tom took care to let dry without any blotting at all, for he held it to the fire instead. Neither did the old man observe this unusual course, the manifest mode being to have used the blotting-paper, as in the first instance.
The matter being now thus far perfected, Tom asked his father if he could have Blackberry—one of the farm horses—to go into C. O. S. early next morning.
"An' welcome, Tom, if he was worth a hundred pounds," said the old man, locking the drawer.
CHAPTER XVI.