Handy Andy Volume I Part 6

"Did you shoot any one with soda-water since I saw you last?"

Andy grinned.

"Did you kill any more dogs lately, Andy?"

"Faix, you're too hard on me, sir; sure I never killed but one dog, and that was an accident----"

"An accident!--curse your impudence, you thief! Do you think, if you killed one of the pack on purpose, we wouldn't cut the very heart o'

you with our hunting whips?"

"Faith, I wouldn't doubt you, sir; but, sure, how could I help that divil of a mare runnin' away wid me, and thramplin' the dogs?"

"Why didn't you hold her, you thief?"

"Hould her, indeed!--you just might as well expect to stop fire among flax as that one."

"Well, be off with you now, Andy, and take care of what I gave you for the squire."

"Oh, never fear, sir," said Andy, as he turned his horse's head homewards. He stopped at the apothecary's in the village, to execute his commission for the "misthis." On telling the son of Galen that he wanted some physic "for one o' the childre up at the big house," the dispenser of the healing art asked _what_ physic he wanted.

"Faith, I dunna what physic."

"What's the matter with the child?"

"He's sick, sir."

"I suppose so, indeed, or you wouldn't be sent for medicine, you're always making some blunder. You come here, and don't know what description of medicine is wanted."

"Don't I?" said Andy, with a great air.

"No, you don't, you omadhaun!" said the apothecary.

Andy fumbled in his pockets, and could not lay hold of the paper his mistress entrusted him with, until he had emptied them thoroughly of their contents upon the counter of the shop; and then, taking the prescription from the collection, he said, "So you tell me I don't know the description of the physic I'm to get. Now, you see, you're out; for _that's_ the _description_!" and he slapped the counter impressively with his hand as he threw down the recipe before the apothecary.

While the medicine was in the course of preparation for Andy, he commenced restoring to his pockets the various parcels he had taken from them in hunting for the recipe. Now, it happened that he had laid them down close beside some articles that were compounded, and sealed up for going out, on the apothecary's counter: and as the law process which Andy had received from Murtough Murphy chanced to resemble in form another inclosure that lay beside it, containing a blister, Andy, under the influence of his peculiar genius, popped the blister into his pocket instead of the package which had been confided to him by the attorney, and having obtained the necessary medicine from M'Garry, rode home with great self-complacency that he had not forgot to do a single thing that had been entrusted to him. "I'm all right this time," said Andy to himself.

Scarcely had he left the apothecary's when another messenger alighted at its door, and asked "If Squire O'Grady's things _was_ ready?"

"There they are," said the innocent M'Garry, pointing to the bottles, boxes, and _blister_, he had made up and set aside, little dreaming that the blister had been exchanged for a law process: and Squire O'Grady's own messenger popped into his pocket the legal instrument that it was as much as any seven men's lives were worth to bring within gunshot of Neck-or-nothing Hall.

Home he went, and the sound of the old gate creaking on its hinges at the entrance of the avenue awoke the deep-mouthed dogs around the house, who rushed infuriate to the spot to devour the unholy intruder on the peace and privacy of the patrician O'Grady; but they recognised the old grey hack and his rider, and quietly wagged their tails and trotted back, and licked their lips at the thoughts of the bailiff they had hoped to eat. The door of Neck-or-nothing Hall was carefully unbarred and unchained, and the nurse-tender was handed the parcel from the apothecary's, and re-ascended to the sick room with slippered foot as quietly as she could; for the renowned O'Grady was, according to her account, "as cross as two sticks;" and she protested, furthermore, "that her heart was grey with him."

Whenever O'Grady was in a bad humour, he had a strange fas.h.i.+on of catching at some word that either he himself, or those with whom he spoke, had uttered, and after often repeating it, or rather mumbling it over in his mouth, as if he were chewing it, off he started into a canter of ridiculous rhymes to the aforesaid word, and sometimes one of these rhymes would suggest a new idea, or some strange a.s.sociation which had the oddest effect possible; and to increase the absurdity, the jingle was gone through with as much solemnity as if he were indulging in a deep and interesting reverie, so that it was difficult to listen without laughing, which might prove a serious matter when O'Grady was in one of the _tantarums_, as his wife used to call them.

Mrs. O'Grady was near the bed of the sick man as the nurse-tender entered.

"Here's the things for your honour, now," said she, in her most soothing tone.

"I wish the d----l had you and them!" said O'Grady.

"Gusty, dear!" said his wife. (She might have said stormy instead of gusty.)

"Oh! they'll do you good, your honour," said the nurse-tender, curtsying, and uncorking bottles, and opening a pill-box.

O'Grady made a face at the pill-box, and repeated the word "pills" several times, with an expression of extreme disgust.

"Pills--pills--kills--wills--ay--make your wills--make them--take them--shake them. When taken--to be well shaken--shew me that bottle."

The nurse-tender handed a phial, which O'Grady shook violently.

"Curse them all!" said the squire. "A pretty thing to have a gentleman's body made a perfect sink, for these blackguard doctors and apothecaries to pour their dirty drugs into--faugh! drugs--mugs--jugs!" he shook the phial again, and looked through it.

"Isn't it nice and pink, darlin'?" said the nurse-tender.

"Pink!" said O'Grady eying her askance, as if he could have eaten her.

"Pink, you old besom, pink"--he uncorked the phial, and put it to his nose. "Pink--phew--!" and he repeated a rhyme to pink which would not look well in print.

"Now, sir, dear, there's a little blisther just to go on your chest--if you plaze."

"A _what_?"

"A warm plasther, dear."

"A _blister_ you said, you old _divil_!"

"Well, sure its something to relieve you."

The squire gave a deep growl, and his wife put in the usual appeal of "Gusty, dear!"

"Hold you tongue, will you? How would _you_ like it? I wish you had it on your----"

"Deed-an-deed, dear," said the nurse-tender.

"By the 'ternal war! if you say another word, I'll throw the jug at you!"

"And there's a nice dhrop o' gruel I have on the fire for you," said the nurse, pretending not to mind the rising anger of the squire, as she stirred the gruel with one hand, while with the other she marked herself with the sign of the cross, and said in a mumbling manner, "G.o.d presarve us! he's the most cantankerous Christian I ever kem across!"

"Shew me that infernal thing!" said the squire.

"What thing, dear?"

"You know well enough, you old hag!--that blackguard blister!"

"Here it is, dear. Now just open the _burst_ o' your s.h.i.+rt, and let me put it an you."

"Give it into my hand here, and let me see it."

"Sartinly, sir;--but I think, if you'd let me just----"