“Bright?”
“Very. He showed me one of Browning’s poems done into Latin, French, and some other language—I think German.”
“You are certain of this, Jack?” cried Percival earnestly.
“I am certain the lad showed them to me, and that he said they were his own translations. He’s in Trinity College at Dublin.”
“What are they going to do with him?”
“They were speaking of the civil service or the Irish bar. Entre nous, they haven’t much money, and it’s a wonder they have a stiver, they are so recklessly hospitable. Why, my dear fellow, there were fifteen guests stopping at Ballybo while I was there, and we met a whole caravan traversing the beautiful road that runs from Westport along the Atlantic when en route for the train.”
“This is admirable,” muttered Percival, half thinking aloud.
“What is admirable?”
“Never mind. Is Ballybo a handsome place?”
“It’s a fine old mansion of that order of architecture so much in vogue when Queen Anne was busying herself in distributing largess to Marlborough. It is surrounded by superb trees, in which ten thousand rooks keep up a cawing that is almost deafening. An inlet of the Atlantic almost brings the seaweed to the hall door-steps. The stables are fit for the Duke of Beaufort, and I can tell you there are horses in the stalls that would bring their five hundred guineas at Tattersall’s.”