Handy Andy Volume I Part 34

"Oh, no, sir! it's only a mistake the master thought you might be making; he thinks you mistuk the house, maybe, sir?"

"Oh, no--I _wather_ think he mistakes me. Will you do me the favo',"

and he produced a packet of papers as he spoke--"the favo' to take my cwedentials to Mr. O'Gwady, and if he throws his eye over these pape's----"

At the word "papers," there was a shout from above, "Don't touch them, you thief, don't touch them!--another blister,--ha! ha! By the 'ternal this and that, I'll have him in the horse-pond!" A heavy stamping overhead ensued, and furious ringing of bells; in the midst of the din, a very pale lady came down-stairs, and pointing the way to a small room, beckoned Furlong to follow her. For a moment he hesitated, for his heart misgave him; but shame at the thought of doubting or refusing the summons of a lady overcame his fear, and he followed to a little parlour, where mutual explanations between Mrs. O'Grady and himself, and many messages, questions, and answers, which she carried up and down stairs, at length set Furlong's mind at ease respecting his personal safety, and finally admitted him into the presence of the truculent lord of the castle--who, when he heard that Furlong had been staying in the enemy's camp, was not, it may be supposed, in a sweet temper to receive him. O'Grady looked thunder as Furlong entered, and eyeing him keenly for some seconds, as if he were taking a mental as well as an ocular measurement of him, he saluted him with--

"Well, sir, a pretty kettle of fish you've made of this. I hope you have not blabbed much about our affairs?"

"Why, I weally don't know--I'm not sure--that is, I won't be positive, because when one is thwown off his guard, you know----"

"Pooh, sir! a man should never be off his guard in an election. But how the d----l, sir, could you make such a thundering mistake as to go to the wrong house?"

"It was a howwid postilion, Miste' O'Gwady."

"The scoundrel!" exclaimed O'Grady, stamping up and down the room.

At this moment, a tremendous crash was heard; the ladies jumped from their seats; O'Grady paused in his rage, and his poor, pale wife exclaimed--

"'T is in the conservatory."

A universal rush was now made to the spot, and there was Handy Andy, buried in the ruins of flower-pots and exotics, directly under an enormous breach in the gla.s.s roof of the building. How this occurred a few words will explain. Andy, when he went to sleep in the justice-room, slept soundly for some hours, but awoke in the horrors of a dream, in which he fancied he was about to be hanged. So impressed was he by the vision, that he determined on making his escape if he could, and to this end piled the chair upon the desk, and the volumes of law books on the chair, and, being an active fellow, contrived to scramble up high enough to lay his hand on the frame of the sky-light, and thus make his way out on the roof. Then walking, as well as the darkness would permit him, along the coping of the wall, he approached, as it chanced, the conservatory; but the coping being loose, one of the flags turned under Andy's foot, and bang he went through the gla.s.s roof, carrying down in his fall some score of flower-pots, and finally stuck in a tub, with his legs upwards, and embowered in the branches of crushed geraniums and hydrangeas.

He was dragged out of the tub, amidst a shower of curses from O'Grady; but the moment Andy recovered the few senses he had, and saw Furlong, regardless of the anathemas of the Squire, he shouted out, "There he is!--there he is!" and rushing towards him, exclaimed, "Now, did I dhrowned you, sir,--did I? Sure, I never murdhered you!"

'T was as much as could be done to keep O'Grady's hands off Andy, for smashing the conservatory, when Furlong's presence made him no longer liable to imprisonment.

"Maybe he has a vote," said Furlong, anxious to display how much he was on the _qui vive_ in election matters.

"_Have_ you a vote, you rascal?"

"You may sarche me if you like, your honour," said Andy, who thought a vote was some sort of property he was suspected of stealing.

"You are either the biggest rogue or the biggest fool I ever met," said O'Grady. "Which are you now?"

"Whichever your honour plazes," said Andy.

"If I forgive you, will you stand by me at the election?"

"I'll stand anywhere your honour bids me," said Andy humbly.

"That's a thorough-going rogue, I'm inclined to think," said O'Grady, aside to Furlong.

"He looks more like a fool in my appwehension," was the reply.

"Oh, these fellows conceal the deepest roguery sometimes under an a.s.sumed simplicity. You don't understand the Irish."

"Und'stand!" exclaimed Furlong; "I pwonounce the whole countwy quite incompwhensible!"

"Well!" growled O'Grady to Andy, after a moment's consideration, "go down to the kitchen, you house-breaking vagabond, and get your supper!"

Now, considering the "fee, faw, fum" qualities of O'Grady, the reader may be surprised at the easy manner in which Andy slipped through his fingers, after having slipped through the roof of his conservatory; but as between two stools folks fall to the ground, so between two rages people sometimes tumble into safety. O'Grady was in a divided pa.s.sion--first his wrath was excited against Furlong for _his_ blunder, and just as that was about to explode, the crash of Andy's sudden appearance amidst the flower-pots (like a practical parody on "Love among the roses") called off the gathering storm in a new direction, and the fury sufficient to annihilate one, was, by dispersion, harmless to two. But on the return of the party from the conservatory, after Andy's descent to the kitchen, O'Grady's rage against Furlong, though moderated, had settled down into a very substantial dissatisfaction, which he evinced by poking his nose between his forefinger and thumb, as if he meditated the abstraction of that salient feature from his face, shuffling his feet about, throwing his right leg over his left knee, and then suddenly, as if that were a mistake, throwing his left over the right, thrumming on the arm of his chair, with his clenched hand, inhaling the air very audibly through his protruded lips, as if he were supping hot soup, and all the time fixing his eyes on the fire with a portentous gaze, as if he would have evoked from it a salamander.

Mrs. O'Grady in such a state of affairs, wishing to speak to the stranger, yet anxious she should say nothing that could bear upon immediate circ.u.mstances lest she might rouse her awful lord and master, racked her invention for what she should say; and at last, with "bated breath" and a very worn-out smile, faltered forth--

"Pray, Mr. Furlong, are you fond of shuttlec.o.c.k?"

Furlong stared, and began a reply of "Weally, I _cawn't_ say that----"

When O'Grady gruffly broke in with, "You'd better ask him, does he love teetotum."

"I thought you could recommend me the best establishment in the metropolis, Mr. Furlong, for buying shuttlec.o.c.ks," continued the lady, unmindful of the interruption.

"You had better ask him where you can get mouse-traps," growled O'Grady.

Mrs. O'Grady was silent, and O'Grady, whose rage had now a.s.sumed its absurd form of tagging changes, continued, increasing his growl, like a _crescendo_ on the double-ba.s.s, as he proceeded:--"You'd better ask, I think--mouse-traps--steel-traps--clap-traps--rat-traps--rattle-traps-- rattle-snakes!"

Furlong stared, Mrs. O'Grady was silent, and the Misses O'Grady cast fearful sidelong glances at "Pa," whose strange irritation always bespoke his not being in what good people call a "sweet state of mind;"

he laid hold of a tea-spoon, and began beating a tattoo on the mantel-piece to a low smothered whistle of some very obscure tune, which was suddenly stopped to say to Furlong, very abruptly--

"So Egan diddled you?"

"Why, he certainly, as I conceive, pwactised, or I might say, in short--he--a--in fact----"

"Oh, yes," said O'Grady, cutting short Furlong's humming and hawing; "oh, yes, I know--diddled you."

Bang went the spoon again, keeping time with another string of nonsense.

"Diddled you--diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon--who was there?"

"A Mister Dawson."

"Phew!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed O'Grady with a doleful whistle; "d.i.c.k the devil! You are in nice hands! All up with us--up with us--

Up, up, up, And here we go down, down, down, down, derry down!

Oh, murther!" and the spoon went faster than before. "Any one else?"

"Mister Bermingham."

"Bermingham!" exclaimed O'Grady.

"A cle'gyman, I think," drawled Furlong.

"Bermingham!" reiterated O'Grady. "What business has he there, and be ----!" O'Grady swallowed a curse when he remembered he was a clergyman. "The enemy's camp--not his principles! Oh, Bermingham, Bermingham,--B_rim_magem, B_rum_magem, Sheffield, Wolverhampton--Murther!

Any one else? Was Durfy there?"

"No," said Furlong; "but there was an odd pe'son, whose name wymes to his--as you seem fond of wymes, Mister O'Gwady."

"What!" said O'Grady, quickly, and fixing his eyes on Furlong; "Murphy?"