One Of Them

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘but who knows that they ‘re not coming in the post now?’

“‘We ‘ll wait till we see them,’ says he.

“‘By my conscience,’ says I, ‘I hope you ‘ll not eat your breakfast till they come.’ And so I walked away. Oh dear! is n’t it a suspicious world?”

“It’s a rascally world!” broke out O’Shea, with bitterness.

“It is!” assented Joe, with a positive energy there was no gainsaying.

“Is Mr. Layton gone with the rest this morning?”

“He is, and the Marquis. They ‘re a-horseback on two ponies not worth fifty shilling apiece.”

“And that counter-jumper, Mosely, I’ll wager he too thinks himself first favorite for the heiress.”

“Well, then, in the name of all that’s lucky, why don’t you thry your own chance?” said Joe, coaxingly.

“Is n’t it because I did try that they have left me out of this invitation? Is n’t it because they saw I was like to be the winning horse that they scratched me out of the race? Is n’t it just because Gorman O’Shea was the man to carry off the prize that they would n’t let me enter the lists?”

“There ‘s only two more as rich as her in all England,” chimed in Joe, “and one of them will never marry any but the Emperor of Roosia.”

“She has money enough!” muttered O’Shea. “And neither father nor mother, brother, sister, kith or kin,” continued Joe, in a tone of exultation that seemed to say he knew of no such good luck in life as to stand alone and friendless in the world.

“Those Heathcotes are related to her.”

“No more than they are to you. I have it all from Miss Smithers, the maid. ‘We ‘re as free as air, Mr. Rouse,’ says she; ‘wherever we have a “conceit,” we can follow it’ That’s plain talking, anyhow.”

“Would you marry Smithers, Joe?” said his master, with a roguish twinkle in his eye.

“Maybe, if I knew for what; though, by my conscience, she’s no beauty!”

“I meant, of course, for a good consideration.”

“Not on a bill, though, – money down, – hard money.”

“And how much of it?” asked O’Shea, with a knowing look.

“The price of that place at Einsale.”

“The ‘Trout and Triangle,’ Joe?” laughed out his master. “Are you still yearning after being an innkeeper in your native town?”

“I am just that,” replied Joe, solemnly. “‘T is what I ‘d rather be than Lord Mayor of Dublin!”

“Well, it is an honorable ambition, no doubt of it. Nothing can be more reasonable, besides, than a man’s desire to fill that station in life which, to his boyish ideas, seemed high and enviable.” This speech Mr. O’Shea delivered in a tone by which he occasionally turned to rehearse oratorical effects, and which, by some strange sympathy, always appeared to please his follower. “Yes, Joe,” continued he, “as the poet says, ‘The child is father of the man.’”

“You mane the man is father of the child,” broke in Joe.

“I do not, booby; I meant what I have said, and what Wordsworth said before me.”

“The more fool he, then. It’s nobody’s father he ‘d be. Arrah! that’s the way you always spoil a fine sintiment with something out of a poet. Poets and play-actors never helped a man out of a ditch!”

“Will you marry this Smithers, if that be her name?” said O’Shea, angrily.

“For the place – ”

“I mean as much.”

“I would, if I was treated – ‘raysonable,’” said he, pausing for a moment in search of the precise word he wanted.

Mr. O’Shea sighed heavily; his exchequer contained nothing but promises; and none knew better than his follower what such pledges were worth.

“It would be the making of you, Joe,” said he, after a brief silence, “if I was to marry this heiress.”

“Indeed, it might be,” responded the other.

“It would be the grand event of your life, that’s what it would be. What could I not do for you? You might be land-steward; you might be under-agent, bailiff, driver, – eh?”

“Yes,” said Joe, closing his eyes, as if he desired to relish the vision undisturbed by external distractions.

“I have always treated you as a sort of friend, Joe, – you know that.”

“I do, sir. I do, indeed.”

“And I mean to prove myself your friend too. It is not the man who has stuck faithfully by me that I ‘d desert. Where’s my dressing-gown?”

“She was torn under the arm, and I gave her to be mended; put this round you,” said he, draping a much-befrogged pelisse over his master’s shoulders.

“These are not my slippers, you stupid ass!”

“They are the ould ones. Don’t you remember shying one of the others, yesterday, at the organ-boy, and it fell in the river and was lost?”

Mr. O’Shea’s brow darkened as he sat down to his meal. “Tell Pan,” said he, “to send me up some broth and a chop about seven. I must keep the house to-day, and be indisposed. And do you go over to Lucca, and raise me a few Naps on my ‘rose-amethyst’ ring. Three will do; five would be better, though.”

Joe sighed. It was a mission he had so often been charged with and never came well out of, since his master would invariably insist on hearing every step of the negotiation, and as unfailingly revenged upon his envoy all the impertinences to which the treaty gave rise.

“Don’t come back with any insolent balderdash about the stone being false, or having a flaw in it. Holditch values it at two hundred and thirty pounds; and, if it wasn’t a family ring, I’d have taken the money. And, mind you, don’t be talking about whose it is, – it ‘s a gentleman waiting for his letters – ”

“Sure I know,” burst in Joe; “his remittances, that ought to be here every day.”

“Just so; and that merely requires a few Naps – ”

“To pay his cigars – ”

“There’s no need of more explanation. Away with you; and tell Bruno I ‘ll want a saddle-horse to-morrow, to be here at the door by two o’clock.”

Joe took his departure, and Mr. O’Shea was left to his own meditations.

It may seem a small cause for depression of spirits, but, in truth, it was always a day of deep humiliation to Mr. O’Shea when his necessities compelled him to separate himself from that cherished relic, his great-grandmother’s ring. It had been reserved in his family, as a sort of charm, for generations; his grand-uncle Luke had married on the strength of it; his own father had flashed it in the eyes of Bath and Cheltenham, for many a winter, with great success; and he himself had so significantly pointed out incorrect items in his hotel bills, with the forefinger that bore it, that landlords had never pressed for payment, but gone away heart-full of the man who owned such splendor.