“It would,” said Jimmy; “but the talk she’ll give after will be terrible to listen to.” “Don’t tell me. A young lady like her wouldn’t know how to curse.” “It’s not cursing,” said Jimmy, “but it’s a way she has of speaking that would make you feel as if the rats beyond in the haggard was Christians compared to you.” “Let her talk.” “And she looks at you straight in the face,” said Jimmy, “the same as if she was trying to see what would be in the inside of your head, and feeling middling sure all the time that there wasn’t much in it, beyond the sweepings of the street.” “It’s for her own good you’re doing it,” said Patsy. There was some consolation in the thought. But Patsy, even while making the suggestion, felt that a good conscience is not always a sufficient support in well-doing. “You might,” he added, “be out about the place and let herself talk to her till the worst of it was over.” This plan, which perhaps would not have suited Mrs. O’Loughlin, commended itself to Jimmy; but it did not make him altogether comfortable about the future. “I might,” he said, “and I will, but she’ll get me for sure at the latter end.” If he had done as his conscience suggested, Patsy Devlin would have gone home at once after settling Miss Blow’s business for her. But the whisky bottle was still more than half full, and it seemed to him a pity to break up a pleasant party at an early hour. He started a fresh subject of conversation, one that he hoped would be interesting to his host. “Tell me this now,” he said. “Do you think that fellow down at Rosivera, the same that brought the pianos along with him, would give a subscription to the sports?” “I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “He’s queer. I never set eyes upon him myself since I finished carting the packing-cases down to Rosivera.” “They tell me that he does be calling at your shop for his bread and the like, and leaving a power of money with you.” “I wouldn’t say he left so much at all,” said Jimmy cautiously. “And anyway it’s a servant that did be coming every day till to-day, and then it was some sort of a foreigner with a written order, him not being able to speak English.” “Would you see your way to asking him for a subscription?” “How would I do it, when he can’t know a word I say to him, nor him to me? Why won’t you talk sense?” “And where’s the man himself, and the fellow that did speak English?” “How would I know? If it’s a subscription you want from him, you’d better go over to Rosivera and ask for it.” “They say,” said Patsy thoughtfully, “that he has plenty to give. A man like that with a motor car running on the road every day, and two foreign gentlemen, let alone an Englishman, to wait on him, must have a power of money. I wouldn’t wonder now, if I took him the right way, but he’d give five pounds. I might drop him a hint that five pounds is the least that any of the gentry would give to the sports.”