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Updated: June 13, 2025
"What Margaret?" cried Mrs. Bilkins, with a start. "Margaret Callaghan, sure." "Our Margaret? Do you mean to say that OUR Margaret has married that that good-for-nothing, inebriated wretch!" "It's a civil tongue the owld lady has, any way," remarked Mr. O'Rourke, critically, from the scraper. Mrs.
If a ghost had dropped in familiarly to breakfast, the constraint and consternation of the Bilkins family could not have been greater. How was the astounding intelligence to be broken to Margaret? Her explosive Irish nature made the task one of extreme delicacy. Mrs. Bilkins flatly declared herself incapable of undertaking it. Mr.
"Troth, thin, sur," said Margaret, with a short, dry laugh, "he 's the divil's own!" Margaret was thin and careworn, and her laugh had the mild gayety of champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr. Bilkins, who was not a shrewd observer. "I 'm afraid, Margaret," he remarked sorrowfully, "that you are not making both ends meet."
And Mr. O'Rourke with a wavering forefinger drew a diagram of the interesting situation on the door-step. "Well," returned Mrs. Bilkins, "if you 're a married man, all I have to say is, there's a pair of fools instead of one. You had better be off; the person you want does n't live here." "Bedad, thin, but she does." "Lives here?" "Sorra a place else." "The man's crazy," said Mrs.
Bilkins was daily expecting it would be discovered before night that Margaret had married one or both of them. But to do Margaret justice, she was faithful in thought and deed to the memory of O'Rourke not the O'Rourke who disappeared so strangely, but the O'Rourke who never existed. "D' ye think, mum," she said one day to Mrs.
By an effort that testified to the excellent condition of his muscles, the person instantly righted himself, and stood swaying unsteadily on his toes and heels, and smiling rather vaguely on Mrs. Bilkins. It was a slightly-built but well-knitted young fellow, in the not unpicturesque garb of our marine service.
O'Rourke disappeared, and after a prolonged absence returned with the monstrous announcement that the thermometer stood at 820! Mr. Bilkins looked at the man closely. He was unmistakably sober. "Eight hundred and twenty what?" cried Mr. Bilkins, feeling very warm, as he naturally would in so high a temperature. "Eight hundthred an' twinty degrays, I suppose, sur." "Larry, you 're an idiot."
Uncle Si, who is an authority on the subject, says that there never was a plumber who died of overwork or in the poorhouse. He tells me that he once knew of a plumber named Bilkins who fell dead of heart disease one day when he discovered that he had worked four minutes overtime. The boss painter was another individual who excited my astonishment.
Dad's welcome was heartier, even though his eyes were dimmed with happy tears. And old Bilkins, our solemn, irreproachable butler, grinned benignly as he stood waiting to announce dinner. What a wealth of affection I had to be grateful for!
Margaret O'Rourke, with the baddish cat following closely at her heels, entered the Bilkins mansion, reached her chamber in the attic without being intercepted, and there laid aside her finery. The breakfast was late that morning. As Mrs. O'Rourke set the coffee-urn in front of Mrs. Bilkins and flanked Mr. Bilkins with the broiled mackerel and buttered toast, Mrs. O'Rourke's conscience smote her.
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