With this reply, Little Smash terminated her mission.

“And now, laddies and gentlemen,” said Mike, with gravity, as he rose to quit the servants’ hall, “my blessing and good wishes be wid ye.  A hearty male have I had at yer hands and yer cookery, and good thanks it desarves.  As for the Injins, jist set yer hearts at rest, as not one of ye will be scalp’d the day, seeing that the savages are all to be forenent the mill this morning, houlding a great council, as I knows from Nick himself.  A comfortable time, then, ye may all enjoy, wid yer heads on yer shoulters, and yer wool on yer heads.”

Mike’s grin, as he retreated, showed that he meant to be facetious, having all the pleasantry that attends a full stomach uppermost in his animal nature at that precise moment.  A shout rewarded this sally, and the parties separated with mutual good humour and good feeling.  In this state of mind, the county Leitrim-man was ushered into the presence of the ladies.  A few words of preliminary explanations were sufficient to put Mike in the proper train, when he came at once to his subject.

“The majjor is no way down-hearted,” he said, “and he ordered me to give his jewty and riverence, and obligations, to his honoured mother and his sisters.  ’Tell ’em, Mike,’ says he, says the majjor, ’that I feels for ’em, all the same as if I was their own fader; and tell ’em,’ says he, ’to keep up their spirits, and all will come right in the ind.  This is a throublesome wor-r-ld, but they that does their jewties to God and man, and the church, will not fail, in the long run, to wor-r-k their way t’rough purgatory even, into paradise.’”

“Surely my son—­my dear Robert—­never sent us such a message as this, Michael?”

“Every syllable of it, and a quantity moor that has slipped my memory,” answered the Irishman, who was inventing, but who fancied he was committing a very pious fraud—­“’Twould have done the Missuses heart good to have listened to the majjor, who spoke more in the cha_rack_ter of a praist, like, than in that of a souldier.”

All three of the ladies looked a little abashed, though there was a gleam of humour about the mouth of Maud, that showed she was not very far from appreciating the Irishman’s report at its just value.  As for Mrs. Willoughby and Beulah, less acquainted with Mike’s habits, they did not so readily penetrate his manner of substituting his own desultory thoughts for the ideas of others.

“As I am better acquainted with Mike’s language, dear mother”—­ whispered Maud—­“perhaps it will be well if I take him into the library and question him a little between ourselves about what actually passed.  Depend on it, I shall get the truth.”

“Do, my child, for it really pains me to hear Robert so much misrepresented—­and, as Evert must now begin to have ideas, I really do not like that his uncle should be so placed before the dear little fellow’s mind.”