“Yes.”
“The cunthry that me sisther, and me aunt, an’ me cousin Tim, an’ me cousin Phil is always braggin about? Wisha, wisha, but it’s lies they’re tellin’ me, sorra a haporth else. The people over there must be regular naygurs afther all,” reluctantly preparing to pocket the coin.
“It will never do to let the American flag go by the board,” whispered Bertie. “Here, my man, here is half a crown for the stars, and here’s half a crown for the stripes.”
“An’ won’t yer honor stand somethin’ for the flagstaff?” with a grin of such unspeakable drollery that both the Americans burst into a fit of laughter.
Mr. Kirwan had been provided with a letter of introduction to a family residing in Merrion Square.
“Shall we look up the Darcys, Bertie?” he asked one morning shortly after their arrival.
“Cui bono?”
“The Joyces were so anxious about it. It would never do to go back to New York without calling, at all events.”
“At it, then. Let’s get it over, and on to Killarney.”
The Darcy mansion in Merrion Square was muffled in its summer wraps. The shutters were closed, the windows barricaded with newspapers, the knocker removed, while a profound air of dust and melancholy hung over it like a pall—this though the scarlet and white hawthorn, the lilac and laburnum, were shedding their delicious odors from the enclosure of the square opposite.