"How should I know?" responded she, with a careless toss of her head, and a very conscious look.
"Well," replied Mr. Toole, "I'll tell you at once. I lost the masther as clane as a new shilling, an' I'm fairly braking my heart lookin' for him; an' here I come, trying would I get the chance iv hearing some soart iv a sketch iv him."
"Is that all?" inquired the damsel, drily.
"All!" ejaculated Larry; "begorra. I think it's enough, an' something to spare. All! why, I tell you the masther's lost, an' anless I get some news of him here, it's twenty to one the two of us 'ill never meet in this disappinting world again. All! I think that something."
"An' pray, what should I know about Mr. O'Connor?" inquired the girl, tartly.
"Did you see him, or hear of him, or was he out here at all?" asked he.
"No, he wasn't. What would bring him?" replied she.
"Then he is gone in airnest," exclaimed Larry, passionately; "he's gone entirely! I half guessed it from the first minute. By jabers, my bitther curse attind that bloody little public. He's lost, an' tin to one he's in glory, for he was always unfortunate. Och! divil fly away with the liquor."
"Well, to be sure," ejaculated the lady's maid, with contemptuous severity, "but it is surprising what fools some people is. Don't you think your master can go anywhere for a day or two, but he must bring you along with him, or ask your leave and licence to go where he pleases forsooth? Marry, come up, it's enough to make a pig laugh only to listen to you."
Just at this moment, and when Larry was meditating his reply, steps were heard in the hall, and voices in debate. They were those of Nicholas Blarden and of Sir Henry Ashwoode. Larry instantly recognized the latter, and his companion both of them.
"They're coming this way," gasped Larry, with agonized alarm. "Tare an' ouns, evangelical girl, we're done for. Put me somewhere quick, or begorra it's all over with us."
"What's to be done, merciful Moses? Where can you go?" ejaculated the terrified girl, surveying the room with frantic haste. "The press. Oh! thank God, the press. Come along, quick, quick, Mr. Toole, for gracious goodness sake."
So saying, she rushed headlong at a kind of cupboard or press, whose doors opened in the panelling of the wall, and fumbling with frightful agitation among her keys, she succeeded at length in unlocking it, and throwing open its door, exhibited a small orifice of about four feet and a half by three in the wall.
"Now, Mr. Toole, into it, as you vally your precious life—quick, quick, for the love of heaven," ejaculated the maiden.
Larry was firmly persuaded that the feat was a downright physical impossibility; yet with a devotion and desperation which love and terror combined alone could inspire, he mounted a chair, and, supported by all the muscular strength of his soul's idol, scrambled into the aperture. A projecting shelf about half way up threw his figure so much out of equilibrium, that the task of keeping him in his place was no light one. By main strength, however, the girl succeeded in closing the door and locking her visitor fairly in, and before her master entered the chamber, Mr. Toole became a close prisoner, and the key which confined him was safely deposited in the charming Betsy's pocket.
Blarden roared lustily to the servants, and with sundry impressive imprecations, commanded them to remove every vestige of the breakfast of which the prisoner had just clandestinely partaken. Meanwhile he continued to walk up and down the room, whistling a lively ditty, and here and there, at particularly sprightly parts, drumming with his foot in time upon the floor.
"Well, that job's done at last," said he. "The room's clean and quiet, and we can't do better than take a twist at the cards. So let's have a pack, and play your best, d'ye mind."
This was addressed to Ashwoode, who, of course, acquiesced.
"Oh, bloody wars, I'm in for it," murmured Larry, "they'll be playin' here to no end, and I smothering fast, as it is; I'll never come out iv this pisition with my life."
Few situations could indeed be conceived physically more uncomfortable. A shelf projecting about midway pressed him forward, exerting anything but a soothing influence upon the backbone, so that his whole weight rested against the door of his narrow prison, and was chiefly sustained by his breast-bone and chin. In this very constrained attitude, and afraid to relieve his fatigue by moving even in the very slightest degree, lest some accidental noise should excite suspicion and betray his presence, the ill-starred squire remained; his discomforts still further enhanced by the pouring of some pickles, which had been overturned upon an upper shelf, in cool streams of vinegar down his back.
"I could not have betther luck," murmured he. "I never discoorsed a famale yet, but I paid through the nose for it. Didn't I get enough iv romance, bad luck to it, an' isn't it a plisint pisition I'm in at last—locked up in an ould cupboard in the wall, an' fairly swimming in vinegar. Oh, the women, the women. I'd rather than every stitch of cloth on my back, I walked out clever an' clane to meet the young masther, and not let myself be boxed up this way, almost dying with the cramps and the snuffication. Oh, them women, them women!"
Thus mourned our helpless friend in inarticulate murmurings. Meanwhile young Ashwoode opened two or three drawers in search of a pack of cards.
"There are several, I know, in that locker," said Ashwoode. "I laid some of them there myself."
"This one?" inquired Blarden, making the interrogatory by a sharp application of the head of his cane to the very panel against which Larry's chin was resting. The shock, the pain, and the exaggerated loudness of the application caused the inmate of the press, in spite of himself, to ejaculate,—
"Oh, holy Pether!"
"Did you hear anything queer?" inquired Blarden, with some consternation. "Anyone calling out?"
"No," said Ashwoode.
"Well, see what the nerves is," cried Blarden, "by ——, I'd have bet ten to one I heard a voice in the wall the minute I hit that locker door—this —— weather don't agree with me."
This sentence he wound up by administering a second knock where he had given the first; and Larry, with set teeth and a grin, which in a horse-collar would have won whole pyramids of gingerbread, nevertheless bore it this time with the silent stoicism of a tortured Indian.
"The nerves is a —— quare piece of business," observed Mr. Blarden—a philosophical remark in which Larry heartily concurred—"but get the cards, will you—what the —— is all the delay about?"
In obedience to Ashwoode's summons, Mistress Betsy Carey entered the room.
"Carey," said he, "open that press and take out two or three packs of cards."
"I can't open the locker," replied she, readily, "for the young mistress put the key astray, sir—I'll run and look for it, if you please, sir."
"God bless you," murmured Larry, with fervent gratitude.
"Hand me that bunch of keys from under your apron," said Blarden, "ten to one we'll find some one among them that'll open it."
"There's no use in trying, sir," replied the girl, very much alarmed, "it's a pitiklar soart of a lock, and has a pitiklar key—you'll ruinate it, sir, if you go for to think to open it with a key that don't fit it, so you will—I'll run and look for it if you please, sir."
"Give me that bunch of keys, young woman; give them, I tell you," exclaimed Blarden.
Thus constrained, she reluctantly gave the keys, and among them the identical one to whose kind offices Mr. O'Toole owed his present dignified privacy.
"Come in here, Chancey," said Mr. Blarden, addressing that gentleman, who happened at that moment to be crossing the hall—"take these keys here and try if any of them will pick that lock."
Chancey accordingly took the keys, and mounting languidly upon a chair, began his operations.
It were not easy to describe Mr. Toole's emotions as