collection of baggy garments, he sat
and warmed himself in the sun, which was fast drawing up in the form of
a blankety mist the moisture from the ground. He had successfully
performed, under the worst possible conditions, a ticklish operation;
and was now so tired that, with his chin on his chest, he fell fast
asleep.

Doyle wakened him by announcing the arrival of the buggy. The good man,
who had more than one nobbler during the morning could not hold his
tongue, but made still another wordy attempt to express his gratitude.
"Whither me girl lives or dies, it'll not be Mat Doyle who forgits what
you did for him this night, doctor! An' if iver you want a bit o' work
done, or some one to do your lyin' awake at night for you, just you
gimme the tip. I don't mind tellin' you now, I'd me shootin'-iron
here"--he touched his right hip--"an' if you'd refused--you was the
third, mind you,--I'd have drilled you where you stood, God damn me if
I wouldn't!"

Mahony eyed the speaker with derision. "Much good that would have done
your wife, you fathead! Well, well, we'll say nothing to MINE, if you
please, about anything of that sort."

"No, may all the saints bless 'er and give 'er health! An' as I say,
doctor...." In speaking he had drawn a roll of bank-notes from his
pocket, and now he tried to stuff them between Mahony's fingers.

"What's this? My good man, keep your money till it's asked for!" and
Mahony unclasped his hands, so that the notes fluttered to the ground.

"Then there let 'em lay!"

But when, in clothes dried stiff as cardboard, Mahony was rolling
townwards--his coachman, a lad of some ten or twelve who handled the
reins to the manner born--as they went he chanced to feel in his coat
pocket, and there found five ten-pound notes rolled up in a neat bundle.

The main part of the road was dry and hard again; but all dips and
holes were wells of liquid mud, which bespattered the two of them from
top to toe as the buggy bumped carelessly in and out. Mahony diverted
himself by thinking of what he could give Polly with this sum. It would
serve to buy that pair of gilt cornices or the heavy gilt-framed
pierglass on which she had set her heart. He could see her, pink with
pleasure, expostulating: "Richard! What WICKED extravagance!" and hear
himself reply: "And pray may my wife not have as pretty a parlour as
her neighbours?" He even cast a thought, in passing, on the pianoforte
with which Polly longed to crown the