“Because you are to take Mr. Hawthorne over to Clonacooney, and to talk tenant-right and landlord-wrong with old Mr. Cassidy; then, when exhausted there, you are bound for the model farm at Rouserstown, and any amount of steam-ploughing and top-dressing; then you can pay a flying visit to Phil Dempsey’s hundred-acre field, and show the Saxon the richness of the land he has invaded; then you are to call for Father O’Dowd, where you can coal and do Home Rule; and then you may come home to dinner, where we shall be very happy to receive you.” And Harry laughed loudly and long at my utter discomfiture—a discomfiture written in my rueful countenance in lines as heavy as those laid on the grim visage of Don Quixote by Gustave Doré.
“You are very kind, Welstone—a most considerate fellow. Why not have arranged for Knobber, or the other side of the Shannon—say Ballybawn, or Curlagh Island?”
The iron had entered my soul.
“Is not this arrangement a very heavy tax upon Mr. Ormonde’s good-nature?” exclaimed our fair guest, graciously coming to the rescue, addressing my mother, who, par parenthèse, expressed herself perfectly charmed with Miss Hawthorne.
“Tax! my dear child? On the contrary, it is just the sort of day my son will thoroughly enjoy: going about the country, talking second crops, turnips, and the price of hay and oats. He is devoted to all that sort of thing, and I doubt if even his duties of gallantry to you, Mabel, would get the better of his devotion to Mme. Ceres.”
I was about to blurt out something that might possibly have compromised me on all sides, when, as luck would have it, the M.P. entered.
He stalked into the room as if the division-bell were ringing, and took his seat as though below the gangway, bowing gravely to the assembled House. He lifted his cup as he would a blue-book, and handled his knife as an act of Parliament.
“You will—ahem!—I’m sure excuse my being a little late”—with a preparatory cough—“but the late sittings of last session have totally unfitted me for bed until the wee sma’ hours.”
“Surely, papa, you are not going to carry the House of Commons hours into the romantic glens of Kilkenly?”
“I admit that I ought not to do so, my dear, but, as a great statesman once observed—I, ahem! quite forget his name at this particular moment—habit is second nature; and were I to retire early, it would—ha! ha!—be only for the purpose of quarrelling with one of my best friends, my best friend—Morpheus.”