“I dhreamt I let robbers into the house through the bedroom windy,” replied Patsy in a faltering voice. “Miss Doris, what would they be afther doin’ to me if I did a thing like that?”
“They would hang you, Patsy,” replied Doris in a cheerful voice.
“Ohone!” cried the unfortunate Patsy, as if he were addressing some third person, “listen to that?—sure, it’s hanged I’d be. Miss Doris!”
“If I was goin’ about wid me legs where me arums ought to be, and me face twisted back to front, and me nose turned into a pig’s snout—for I dhreamt I was like that in me dhrame—what would I do for a livin’ at all, at all?”
“I don’t know,” said Doris, trying to conjure up an occupation for a person so peculiarly situated and failing. “But you aren’t going to be like that, so don’t think about it.”
“Miss Doris,” said Patsy, who listened to this advice without relaxing in the least the lugubrious expression on his face, “whin’s the ould lady all covered wid jewels comin’?”
“Which old lady? What on earth do you mean, Patsy?”
“Ould Lady Molyneux,” replied Patsy; “I’ve heard tell she’s all stuck over wid jewels like the plums on a puddin’!”
“She’s coming to-morrow, I believe,” said Doris. “And you are not to speak in that disrespectful way of a lady!”
“I’m not wishin’ to be disrespectful, Miss Doris; but I dhreamt last night Paddy Murphy had broke into the house.”
“A highwayman, Miss Doris; and he had the ould lady on the floor and was prizin’ the jewels off her wid the point of his knife same as you prize barnacles off a rock down by the say-side.”
Lord Gawdor gave a howl of laughter. He was not in love with his Aunt Molyneux, and the picture of her as imagined by Patsy tickled his fancy immensely.
Patsy, seeing him laugh, grinned in a half-hearted fashion and scratched his head.
“Miss Doris,” said he, looking up from the toes of his boots which he had been contemplating and still grinning, not from merriment, but as if the grin had stuck to his face and would not come off, “couldn’t you tell the ould lady to keep away, for it’s afear’d I am that the dhrame will come true.”
“I wish I could,” said Doris whole-heartedly; then, remembering to whom she was speaking: “Don’t talk nonsense. It’s very wicked to be superstitious and believe in dreams—besides, dreams always come contrary; if you dream of a wedding some one is sure to die, and if you dream a person is dead, it’s a sign they are going to be married——”