“How,” exclaimed his master, “how—what is it? Tell me instantly.”
“Miss Gourlay is ill, sir. She was goin' to be married to this lord; her father, I believe, had the day appointed, and she had given her consent.”
His master seized him by the collar with both hands, and peering into his eyes, whilst his own blazed with actual fire, he held him for a moment as if in a vise, exclaiming, “Her consent, you villain!” But, as if recollecting himself, he suddenly let him go, and said, calmly, “Go on with what you were about to say.”
“I have very little more to say, sir,” replied Dandy; “herself and Lord Dunroe is only waitin' till she gets well and then they're to be married?”
“You said she gave her consent, did you not!”
“No doubt of it, sir, and that, I believe, is what's breakin' her heart. However, it's not my affair to direct any one; still, if I was in somebody's shoes, I know the tune I'd sing.”
“And what tune would you sing?” asked his master.
Dandy sung the following stave, and, as he did it, he threw his comic eye upon his master with such humorous significance that the latter, although wrapped in deep reflection at the moment, on suddenly observing! it, could not avoid smiling:
“Will you list, and come with me, fair maid?
Will you list, and come with me, fair maid?
Will you list, and come with me, fair maid?
And folly the lad with the white cockade?”
“If you haven't a good voice, sir, you could whisper the words into her ear, and as you're so near the mouth—hem—a word to the wise—then point to the chaise that you'll have standin' outside, and my life for you, there's an end to the fees o' the docther.”