Page:The Snake's Pass (Stoker).djvu/278

 "Thanks, Andy, but I think not; unless you tell Mr. Dick that we have had a pleasant journey this morning."

"Nothin' but that?—to nobody?"

"Who to, for instance, Andy?"

"There's Miss Norah, now! Shure girruls is always fond iv gettin' missages, an' most iv all from people what they're not fond iv!"

"Meaning me?"

"Oh, yis! oh, yis! if there's wan more nor another what she hates the sight iv, it's yer 'an'r! Shure didn't I notice it in her eye ere yistherday night, beyant at the boreen gate? Faix! but it's a nice eye Miss Norah has! Now, yer 'an'r, wouldn't an eye like that be betther for a young gintleman to luk into, than the quare eye iv yer fairy girrul—the wan that ye wor lukin' for, an' didn't find!"

The sly way in which Andy looked at me as he said this was quite indescribable. I have seen sly humour in the looks of children where the transparent simplicity of their purpose was a foil to their manifest intention to pretend to deceive. I have seen the arch glances of pretty young women when their eyes contradicted with resistless force the apparent meaning of their words; but I have never seen any slyness which could rival that of Andy. However, when he had spoken as above, he seemed to have spent the last bolt in his armoury; and for the remainder of the drive to Recess he did not touch again on the topic, or on a kindred one.