The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [86]
“Oh, but what can you expect from that wretched old Julia Duffy?” said Lady Dysart good-naturedly; “she’s too poor to keep the place in order.”
“I can expect one thing of her,” said Lambert, with possibly a little more indignation than he felt; “that she’d pay up some of her arrears, or if she can’t, that she’d go out of the farm. I could get a tenant for it to-morrow that would give me a good fine for it and put the house to rights into the bargain.”
“Of course, that would be an excellent thing, and I can quite see that she ought to go,” replied Lady Dysart, falling away from her first position; “but what would happen to the poor old creature if she left Gurthnamuckla?”
“That’s just what your son says,” replied Lambert with an almost irrepressible impatience; “he thinks she oughtn’t to be disturbed because of some promise that she says Sir Benjamin made her, though there isn’t a square inch of paper to prove it. But I think there can be no doubt that she’d be better and healthier out of that house; she keeps it like a pigstye. Of course, as you say, the trouble is to find some place to put her.”
Lady Dysart turned upon him a face shining with the light of inspiration.
“The back-lodge!” she said, with Delphic finality. “Let her go into the back-lodge when Hynes goes out of it!”
Mr. Lambert received this suggestion with as much admiration as if he had not thought of it before.
“By Jove! Lady Dysart, I always say that you have a better head on your shoulders than any one of us! That’s a regular happy thought.”
Any new scheme, no matter how revolutionary, was sure to be viewed with interest, if not with favour, by Lady Dysart, and if she happened to be its inventor, it was endowed with virtues that only flourished more strongly in the face of opposition. In a few minutes she had established Miss Duffy in the back-lodge, with, for occupation, the care of the incubator recently imported to Bruff, and hitherto a failure except as a cooking-stove; and for support, the milk of a goat that should be chained to a laurel at the back of the lodge, and fed by hand. While these details were still being expanded, there broke upon the air a series of shrill, discordant whistles, coming from the direction of the lake.
“Good heavens!” ejaculated Lady Dysart. “What can that be? Something must be happening to the steam-launch; it sounds as if it were in danger!”
“It’s more likely to be Hawkins playing the fool,” replied Lambert ill-temperedly. “I saw him on the launch with Miss Fitzpatrick just after we left the pier.”
Lady Dysart said nothing, but her expression changed with such dramatic swiftness from vivid alarm to disapproval, that her mental attitude was as evident as if she had spoken.
“Hawkins is very popular in Lismoyle,” observed Lambert, tepidly.
“That I can very well understand,” said Lady Dysart, opening her parasol with an abruptness that showed annoyance, “since he takes so much trouble to make himself agreeable to the Lismoyle young ladies.”
Another outburst of jerky, amateur whistles from the steam launch gave emphasis to the remark.
“Oh, the trouble’s a pleasure,” said Lambert acidly. “I hope the pleasure won’t be a trouble to the young ladies one of these days.”
“Why, what do you mean?” cried Lady Dysart, much interested.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lambert, with a laugh, “except that’s he’s been known to love and ride away before now.”
He had no particular object in lowering Hawkins in Lady Dysart’s eyes, beyond the fact that it was an