Handy Andy, Volume One | Page 9

his comments as
he proceeded. "'Working heaven and earth to'--ha!--so that's the work
O'Grady's at--that's old friendship,--foul!--foul! and after all the money
I lent him, too;--he'd better take care--I'll be down on him if he plays
false;--not that I'd like that much either:--but--let's see who's this
coming down to oppose me?--Sack Scatterbrain--the biggest fool from
this to himself;--the fellow can't ride a bit,--a pretty member for a
sporting county! 'I lodge at a milliner's'--divil doubt you, Murtough; I'll
engage you do. Bad luck to him!--he'd rather be fooling away his time
in a back parlour, behind a bonnet shop, than minding the interests of
the county. 'Pension'--ha!--wants it sure enough;--take care, O'Grady,
or, by the powers, I'll be at you. You may baulk all the bailiffs, and
defy any other man to serve you with a writ; but, by jingo! if I take the
matter in hand, I'll be bound I'll get it done. 'Stephen's Green--big
ditch--where I used to hunt water-rats.' Divil sweep you, Murphy, you'd
rather be hunting water-rats any day than minding your business. He's a
clever fellow for all that. 'Favourite bitch--Mrs. Egan.'--Aye! there's the
end of it--with his bit o' po'thry, too! The divil!"
The squire threw down the letter, and then his eye caught the other two
that Andy had purloined.
"More of that stupid blackguard's work!--robbing the mail--no
less!--that fellow will be hanged some time or other. Egad, may be
they'll hang him for this! What's best to be done? May be it will be the
safest way to see whom they are for, and send them to the parties, and
request they will say nothing: that's it."
The squire here took up the letters that lay before him, to read their
superscriptions; and the first he turned over was directed to Gustavus
Granby O'Grady, Esq., Neck-or-nothing Hall, Knockbotherum. This
was what is called a curious coincidence. Just as he had been reading
all about O'Grady's intended treachery to him, here was a letter to that
individual, and with the Dublin post-mark too, and a very grand seal.

The squire examined the arms; and, though not versed in the mysteries
of heraldry, he thought he remembered enough of most of the arms he
had seen to say that this armorial bearing was a strange one to him. He
turned the letter over and over again, and looked at it back and front,
with an expression in his face that said, as plain as countenance could
speak, "I'd give a trifle to know what is inside of this." He looked at the
seal again: "Here's a--goose, I think it is, sitting on a bowl with
cross-bars on it, and a spoon in its mouth: like the fellow that owns it,
may be. A goose with a silver spoon in its mouth--well, here's the
gable-end of a house, and a bird sitting on the top of it. Could it be
Sparrow? There is a fellow called Sparrow, an under-secretary at the
Castle. D----n it! I wish I knew what it's about."
The squire threw down the letter as he said, "D----n it!" but took it up
again in a few seconds, and catching it edgewise between his forefinger
and thumb, gave a gentle pressure that made the letter gape at its
extremities, and then, exercising that sidelong glance which is peculiar
to postmasters, waiting-maids, and magpies who inspect marrowbones,
peeped into the interior of the epistle, saying to himself as he did so,
"All's fair in war, and why not in electioneering?" His face, which was
screwed up to the scrutinising pucker, gradually lengthened as he
caught some words that were on the last turn-over of the sheet, and so
could be read thoroughly, and his brow darkened into the deepest frown
as he scanned these lines: "As you very properly and pungently remark,
poor Egan is a spoon--a mere spoon." "Am I a spoon, you rascal?" said
the squire, tearing the letter into pieces, and throwing it into the fire.
"And so, Misther O'Grady, you say I'm a spoon!" and the blood of the
Egans rose as the head of that pugnacious family strode up and down
the room: "I'll spoon you, my buck!--I'll settle your hash! may be I'm a
spoon you'll sup sorrow with yet!"
Here he took up the poker, and made a very angry lunge at the fire that
did not want stirring, and there he beheld the letter blazing merrily
away. He dropped the poker as if he had caught it by the hot end, as he
exclaimed, "What the d----l shall I do? I've burnt the letter!" This threw
the squire into a fit of what he was wont to call his "considering cap;"
and he sat with his feet on the fender for some minutes, occasionally

muttering to himself