Robert was delighted to see me, and I had had a whisky-and-soda and been shown two or three more hound puppies before it occurred to him to introduce me to his aunt.  I had not expected an aunt, as Robert is well on the heavenward side of sixty; but there she was:  she made me think of a badly preserved Egyptian mummy with a brogue.  I am always a little afraid of my hostess, but there was something about Robert’s aunt that made me know I was a worm.  She came down to dinner in a bonnet and black kid gloves—­a circumstance that alone was awe-inspiring.  She sat entrenched at the head of the table behind an enormous dish of thickly jacketed potatoes, and, though she scorned to speak to Robert or me, she kept up a sort of whispered wrangle with the parlour-maid all the time.  The latter’s red hair hung down over her shoulders—­and at intervals over mine also—­in horrible luxuriance, and recalled the leading figure in the pursuit of Amazon; there was, moreover, something about the heavy boots in which she tramped round the table that suggested that Amazon had sought sanctuary in the cow-house.  I have done some roughing it in my time, and I am not over-particular, but I admit that it was rather a shock to meet the turkey itself again, more especially as it was the sole item of the menu.  There was no doubt of its identity, as it was short of a leg, and half the breast had been shaved away.  The aunt must have read my thoughts in my face.  She fixed her small implacable eyes on mine for one quelling instant, then she looked at Robert.  Her nephew was obviously afraid to meet her eye; he coughed uneasily, and handed a surreptitious potato to the puppy who was sitting under his chair.

“This place is rotten with dogs,” said the aunt; with which announcement she retired from the conversation, and fell again to the slaughter of the parlour-maid.  I timidly ate my portion of turkey and tried not to think about the cow-house.

It rained all night.  I could hear the water hammering into something that rang like a gong; and each time I rolled over in the musty trough of my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the mischief they had left the tap running all night.  Next morning the matter was explained when, on demanding a bath, I was told that “there wasn’t but one in the house, and ’twas undher the rain-down.  But sure ye can have it,” with which it was dragged in full of dirty water and flakes of whitewash, and when I got out of it I felt as if I had been through the Bankruptcy Court.

The day was windy and misty—­a combination of weather possible only in Ireland—­but there was no snow, and Robert Trinder, seated at breakfast in a purple-red hunting coat, dingy drab breeches, and woollen socks, assured me that it was turning out a grand morning.