“Oh, but you will; indeed, you must.  You promised you would, you know, and I want to hear how she goes on.”

“Well, I’ll just come up, but I won’t stay, for I promised Mrs Colligan to be home early.”  This was always the doctor’s excuse when he wished to get away.  He never allowed his domestic promises to draw him home when there was anything to induce him to stay abroad; but, to tell the truth, he was getting rather sick of his companion.  The doctor took his hat, and went to his patient.

“He’ll not be above ten minutes or at any rate a quarter of an hour,” thought Barry, “and then I must do it.  How he sucked it all in about the farm!—­that’s the trap, certainly.”  And he stood leaning with his back against the mantel-piece, and his coat-laps hanging over his arm, waiting for and yet fearing, the moment of the doctor’s return.  It seemed an age since he went.  Barry looked at his watch almost every minute; it was twenty minutes past nine, five-and-twenty—­thirty—­forty—­three quarters of an hour—­“By Heaven!” said he, “the man is not coming! he is going to desert me—­and I shall be ruined!  Why the deuce didn’t I speak out when the man was here!”

At last his ear caught the sound of the doctor’s heavy foot on the gravel outside the door, and immediately afterwards the door bell was rung.  Barry hastily poured out a glass of raw spirits and swallowed it; he then threw himself into his chair, and Doctor Colligan again entered the room.

“What a time you’ve been, Colligan!  Why I thought you weren’t coming all night.  Now, Terry, some hot water, and mind you look sharp about it.  Well, how’s Anty to-night?”

“Weak, very weak; but mending, I think.  The disease won’t kill her now; the only thing is whether the cure will.”

“Well, doctor, you can’t expect me to be very anxious about it:  unfortunately, we had never any reason to be proud of Anty, and it would be humbug in me to pretend that I wish she should recover, to rob me of what you know I’ve every right to consider my own.”  Terry brought the hot water in, and left the room.

“Well, I can’t say you do appear very anxious about it.  I’ll just swallow one dandy of punch, and then I’ll get home.  I’m later now than I meant to be.”

“Nonsense, man.  The idea of your being in a hurry, when everybody knows that a doctor can never tell how long he may be kept in a sick-room!  But come now, tell the truth; put yourself in my condition, and do you mean to say you’d be very anxious that Anty should recover?—­Would you like your own sister to rise from her death-bed to rob you of everything you have?  For, by Heaven! it is robbery—­nothing less.  She’s so stiff-necked, that there’s no making any arrangement with her.  I’ve tried everything, fair means and foul, and nothing’ll do but she must go and marry that low young Kelly—­so immeasurably beneath her, you know, and of course only scheming for her money.  Put yourself in my place, I say; and tell me fairly what your own wishes would be?”