"And what'll you be plazed to have for supper, miss?" asked Biddy.
"What can you give us?" asked Mr. Dashwood.
"Well, get us a cold roast chicken and some ham. I'm sure you'd like chicken, wouldn't you?" turning to the girl.
"Yes," said she, "as long as they haven't to cook it. I'm famished."
Biddy retired. There was no cold chicken and there was no ham on the premises; but the spirit of hospitality demanded that ten minutes should be spent in pretending to look for them.
They had fried rashers of bacon--there were no eggs--and tea, and when Miss Grimshaw retired for the night to a stuffy bedroom ornamented with a stuffed cat, she could hear the deep tones of Moriarty's voice colloguing with Mrs. Sheelan, telling her most likely of the trick he had played on the bailiff man.
She wondered how far that benighted individual had wandered by this time on his road to Cloyne, and what he would say to Moriarty, and what Moriarty would say to him, when they met.
She could not but perceive that the commercial morality of the house she was going to was of an old-fashioned type, dating from somewhere in the times of the buccaneers, and she felt keenly interested in the probable personality of Mr. French.
Moriarty she liked unreservedly; and in Mr. Dashwood, her fellow-stranger in this unknown land, she felt an interest which he was returning as he lay in bed, pipe in mouth, and his head on a pillow stuffed presumably with brickbats.
Andy Meehan was a jockey who had already won Mr. French three races. He was a product of the estate, and a prodigy, though by no means an infant.
Nobody knew his age exactly. Under five feet, composed mostly of bone with a little skin stretched tightly over it, with a face that his cap nearly obliterated, Andy presented a problem in physiology very difficult of solution. That is to say, in Mr. French's words, the more he ate the lighter he grew. In the old days, before Mr. French took him into his stable as helper, when food was scarce and Andy half-starved, he was comparatively fat. Housed and fed well, he waxed thin, and kicked. Kicked for a better job, and got it. He was a Heaven-born jockey. He possessed hands, knees, and head. He was made to go on a horse just as a limpet is made to go on a rock. Nothing on the ground, he was everything when mounted. He was insight, dexterity, coolness, courage, and judgment.