‘To find a husband for Mag, eh?’ said Toole.

’No, no.  Oh, Dr. Toole, ‘twas—­’twas for me,’ sobbed poor Mrs. Mack.  Toole stared for a moment, and had to turn quickly about, and admire some shell-work in a glass box over the chimneypiece very closely, and I think his stout short back was shaking tremulously as he did so; and, when he turned round again, though his face was extraordinarily grave, it was a good deal redder than usual.

’Well, my dear Madam, and where’s the great harm in that, when all’s done?’ said Toole.

’Oh, doctor, I had the unpardonable wakeness, whatever come over me, to write her two letters on the subject, and she’ll print them, and expose me, unless,’—­here she rolled herself about in an agony of tears, and buried her fat face in the back of the chair.

‘Unless you give her money, I suppose,’ said Toole.  ’There’s what invariably comes of confidential communications with female enchanters and gipsies!  And what do you propose to do?’

’I don’t know—­what can I do?  She got the L5 I borrowed from my brother, and he can’t lend me more; and I can’t tell him what I done with that; and she has L3 10s.  I—­I raised on my best fan, and the elegant soiclainet, you know—­I bought it of Knox & Acheson, at the Indian Queen, in Dame-street;’ and his poor patient turned up her small tearful blue eyes imploringly to his face, and her good-natured old features were quivering all over with tribulation.

‘And Mag knows nothing of all this?’ said Toole.

‘Oh, not for the wide world,’ whispered the matron, in great alarm.  ‘Whisht! is that her coming?’

’No; there she is across the street talking to Mrs. Nutter.  Listen to me:  I’ll manage that lady, Mrs. Mary—­what’s her name?—­Matchwell.  I’ll take her in hands, and—­whisper now.’

So Toole entered into details, and completed an officious little conspiracy; and the upshot of it was that Mrs. Mack, whenever M. M. fixed a day for her next extortionate visit, was to apprise the doctor, who was to keep in the way; and, when she arrived, the good lady was just to send across to him for some ‘peppermint drops,’ upon which hint Toole himself would come slily over, and place himself behind the arras in the bed-room, whither, for greater seclusion and secrecy, she was to conduct the redoubted Mary Matchwell, who was thus to be overheard, and taken by the clever doctor in the act; and then and there frightened not only into a surrender of the documents, but of the money she had already extracted, and compelled to sign such a confession of her guilt as would effectually turn the tables, and place her at the mercy of the once more happy Macnamara.

The doctor was so confident, and the scheme, to the sanguine Celtic imagination of the worthy matron, appeared so facile of execution and infallible of success, that I believe she would at that moment have embraced, and even kissed, little Toole, in the exuberance of her gratitude, had that learned physician cared for such fooleries.