The pedlar, however, notwithstanding that his commercial transactions had been concluded, seemed somehow in no hurry. On the contrary, he took up his pack and exclaimed, “I must go back to the kitchen, till I see what can be done there in the way of business; hearin' that you were finishin' breakfast, I hurried up here to sell my goods and have my chat.”
“Very well, Cannie,” said the proctor, “try the folks below, and success to you!”
The pedlar once more sought the kitchen, where he lingered in fact more like a man who seemed fatigued than otherwise, inasmuch as his eyes occasionally closed, and his head nodded, in spite of him. He kept, however, constantly watching and peeping into the yard and lawn from time to time, as if he expected to see somebody. At length he got tip and was about to go, when he said to Letty Lenehan:--“Ah, thin, Letty, afore I go I'd give a trifle that Miss Julia 'ud see a bracelet I got since I was here last; divil sich a beauty ever was seen.”
“Very well, Cannie, I'll tell her if you wish.”
“Then, Letty, may it rain honeycombs an you, an' do. I'll go round to the hall-door, 'say, and she can look at them there; an' see, Letty, say the sorra foot I'll go from the place till she sees it: that it'll be worth her while; and that if she knew how I got it, she'd fly--if she had wings--to get a glimpse of it.”
He had not been more than a minute or two at the hall-door when Julia, struck by the earnestness of the man's language, which lost nothing in the transmission, made her appearance.
“Well now, Cannie,” said she, “what wonderful matter is this you have got to show me?”
“Here it is, Miss Julia,” said he, in his usual jocular and somewhat loud voice, “here it is, I'll have it in a minute--listed, Miss Julia,” he added, in a solemn and impressive undertone: “what I'm goin' to say is more to you than aither life or death. Don't go out by yourself--don't go at all out early in the morning or late in the evenin'.”
“Why, miss, it came to me by accident only; but the truth is there's a plot laid, it seems, to carry you off to the mountains.”
“That's the very thing, miss, that I don't know; but a strange man met me on my way here this mornin' and tould me that he was a friend to your father--who was wanst a friend to him--and that, if I'd see you, to put you on your guard against goin' either to the poor or sick at the hours I spoke of; and he bid me say, too, that there's bad work and thraichery about you--and by no manner o' means to go any distance from your father's house--ay, thraichery, an from them you'd never think o' suspectin' for it. Now, miss, keep this counsel to yourself, and don't say it was I that tould you, but as you love a fair name and an unblemished character, act upon it. Dang me,” he added, “but I had like to forget--if any message--I was bid to tell you--should come from Widow Lynch's, sayin' that her daughter's dyin' and wishes to see you, and that it's afther dusk it'll come--if it does come--well, if any sich message is sent to you, don't go--nor don't go for any message, no matther what it is--hem--ahem--oh! here I have it at last miss,” he exclaimed in his natural voice, “isn't that a beauty?”