A gentle tap at the door which communicated with the sitting-room was heard at this moment, and Dalton exclaimed,
“Come in!” but, not suffering the interruption to stop the current of his discourse, he was about to resume, when Mr. Prichard's well-powdered head appeared at the door.
“I began to suspect you had forgotten me, Mr. Dalton,” said he; but suddenly catching a glimpse of Lady Hester, he stopped to ask pardon for the intrusion.
“Faith, and I just did,” said Dalton, laughing; “couldn't you contrive to step in in the morning, and we 'll talk that little matter over again?”
“Yes, Prichard; pray don't interrupt us now,” said Lady Hester, in a tone of half-peevishness. “I cannot possibly spare you, Mr. Dalton, at this moment;” and the man of law withdrew, with a most respectful obeisance.
“You'll forgive me, won't you?” said she, addressing Dalton, with a glance whose blandishment had often succeeded in a more difficult case.
“And now, papa, we'll adjourn to the drawing-room,” said Kate, who somehow continued to notice a hundred deficiencies in the furniture of a little chamber she had often before deemed perfect.
Dalton accordingly offered his arm to Lady Hester, who accepted the courtesy in all form, and the little party moved into the sitting-room; Nelly following, with an expression of sadness in her pale features, very unlike the triumphant glances of her father and sister.
“I 'm certain of your pardon, Mr. Dalton, and of yours, too, my dear child,” said Lady Hester, turning towards Kate, as she seated herself on the stiff old sofa, “when I avow that I have come here determined to pass the evening with you. I 'm not quite so sure that my dear Miss Dalton's forgiveness will be so readily accorded me. I see that she already looks gravely at the prospect of listening to my fiddle-faddle instead of following out her own charming fancies.”
“Oh, how you wrong me, my Lady!” broke in Nelly, eagerly. “If it were not for my fears of our unfitness our inability,” she stammered in confusion and shame; and old Dalton broke in,
“Don't mind her, my Lady; we 're as well used to company as any family in the country; but, you see, we don't generally mix with the people one meets abroad; and why should we? God knows who they are. There was chaps here last summer at the tables you would n't let into the servants' hall. There was one I seen myself, with an elegant pair of horses, as nice steppers as ever you looked at, and a groom behind with a leather strap round him,” and here Mr. Dalton performed a pantomime, by extending the fingers of his open hand at the side of his head, to represent a cockade “what d' ye call it in his hat; and who was he, did you think? 'Billy Rogers,' of Muck; his father was in the canal—”
“In the canal!” exclaimed Lady Hester, in affright.
“Yes, my Lady; in the Grand Canal, an inspector at forty pounds a year, the devil a farthin' more; and if you seen the son here, with two pins in his cravat, and a gold chain twisting and turning over his waistcoat, with his hat on one side, and yellow gloves, new every morning, throwing down the 'Naps' at that thieving game they call 'Red and Black,' you'd say he was the Duke of Leinster!”
“Was he so like his Grace?” asked Lady Hester, with a delightful simplicity.
“No; but grander!” replied Dalton, with a wave of his hand.
“It is really, as you remark, very true,” resumed her Ladyship. “It is quite impossible to venture upon an acquaintance out of England; and I cordially concur in the caution you practise.”
“So I 'm always telling the girls, 'better no company than trumpery!' not that I don't like a bit of sociality as well as ever I did, a snug little party of one's own, people whose mothers and fathers had names, the real old stock of the land. But to be taken up with every chance rapscallion you meet on the cross-roads, to be hand and glove with this, that, and the other, them never was my sentiments.”
It is but justice to confess there was less of hypocrisy in the bland smile Lady Hester returned to this speech than might be suspected; for, what between the rapidity of Daiton's utterance, and the peculiar accentuation he gave to certain words, she did not really comprehend one syllable of what he said. Meanwhile the two girls sat silent and motionless. Nelly, in all the suffering of shame at the absurdity of her father's tone, the vulgarity of an assumption she had fondly hoped years of poverty might have tamed down, if not obliterated; Kate, in mute admiration of their lovely visitor, of whose graces she never wearied. Nor did Lady Hester make any effort to include them in the conversation; she had come out expressly for one sole object, to captivate Mr. Dalton; and she would suffer nothing to interfere with her project. To this end she heard his long and tiresome monologues about Irish misery and distress, narrated with an adherence to minute and local details that made the whole incomprehensible; she listened to him with well-feigned interest, in his narratives of the Daltons of times long past, of their riotous and extravagant living, their lawlessness, and their daring; nor did she permit her attention to flag while he recounted scenes and passages of domestic annals that might almost have filled a page of savage history.
“How sorry you must have felt to leave a country so dear by all its associations and habits!” sighed she, as he finished a narrative of more than ordinary horrors.
“Ain't I breaking my heart over it? Ain't I fretting myself to mere skin and bone?” said he, with a glance of condolence over his portly figure. “But what could I do? I was forced to come out here for the education of the children bother it for education! but it ruins everybody nowadays. When I was a boy, reading and writing, with a trifle of figures, was enough for any one. If you could tell what twenty bullocks cost, at two pounds four-and-sixpence a beast, and what was the price of a score of hoggets, at fifteen shillings a head, and wrote your name and address in a good round hand, 'twas seldom you needed more; but now you have to learn everything, ay, sorrow bit, but it 's learning the way to do what every one knows by nature; riding, dancing, no, but even walking, I 'm told, they teach too! Then there's French you must learn for talking! and Italian to sing! and German, upon my soul, I believe it's to snore in! and what with music, dancing, and drawing, everybody is brought up like a play-actor.”
“There is, as you remark, far too much display in modern education, Mr. Dalton; but you would seem fortunate enough to have avoided the error. A young lady whose genius can accomplish such a work as this—”
“'Tis one of Nelly's, sure enough,” said he, looking at the group to which she pointed, but feeling even more shame than pride in the avowal.
The sound of voices a very unusual noise from the door without, now broke in upon the conversation, and Andy's cracked treble could be distinctly heard in loud altercation.
“Nelly! Kitty! I say,” cried Dalton, “see what's the matter with that old devil. There's something come over him to-day, I think, for he won't be quiet for two minutes together.”
Kate accordingly hastened to discover the cause of a tumult in which now the sound of laughter mingled.
As we, however, enjoy the prerogative of knowing the facts before they could reach her, we may as well inform the reader that Andy, whose intelligence seemed to have been preternaturally awakened by the sight of an attorney, had been struck by seeing two strangers enter the house-door and leisurely ascend the stairs. At such a moment, and with his weak brain filled with its latest impression, the old man at once set them down as bailiffs come to arrest his master. He hobbled after them, therefore, as well as he could, and just reached the landing as Mr. Jekyl, with his friend Onslow, had arrived at the door.
“Mr. Dalton lives here, I believe?” said Jekyl.
“Anan,” muttered Andy, who, although he heard the question, affected not to have done so, and made this an excuse for inserting himself between them and the door.
“I was asking if Mr. Dalton lived here!” cried Jekyl, louder, and