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You got a color like all indoors pretty, but putty." "You you don't think there's nothing much the matter with me, do you, Mr. Blaney?" "Sure I don't. Why, I got a bunch of Don'ts for you up my sleeve that'll color you up like drug-store daub." Tears and laughter trembled in her voice. "You mean that the outdoor stuff will do it, Mr. Blaney?" "That's the talk!" "But you you ain't the doctor."
"Bedad, and it's him has the foine nose for turkey!" said Blaney, a good-natured, jovial Irishman. "Yes, or for pay-day, more like," said Keefe, a black-browed, villainous fellow countryman of Blaney's and, strange to say, his great friend. Big Sandy McNaughton, a Canadian Highlander from Glengarry, rose up in wrath.
From this unfit class of pensioner Crabbe selects three for his minute analysis of character. They are, as usual, of a very sordid type. The first, a man named "Blaney," had his prototype in a half-pay major known to Crabbe in his Aldeburgh days, and even the tolerant Jeffrey held that the character was rather too shameless for poetical treatment.
Bridge, he said, on a very important business matter." The doctor smiled. "I'm afraid," he said, "that business will be indefinitely postponed. Who was the man?" "He's one of our aldermen, Michael Blaney." They were startled by a cry from the bed. Bridge was sitting bolt upright, and terror was in his face. "Stop him, Weeks!" he gasped. "He's trying to choke me. Pull him off.
Blaney had been waiting for that message for the past hour, for he had told the clerk to let him know as soon as Jim should arrive, and he had expected him earlier; but now he only swore savagely at the bell-boy, and ordered another whiskey. It was the last of a long series of bracers, and it did its work a little too well.
Blaney glanced at the other two. They were watching McNally closely, and Williams was fumbling his watch chain. Blaney's eyes met McNally's. "What'll you do for us?" he asked. "It'll take careful work." For answer McNally rose and went to the bed, where his bag lay open. He rummaged a moment, then returned with a pack of cards. "Forgot my chips," he said, seating himself. "Close up, boys."
He dealt the cards with deft hands. Blaney started to take his up, then paused with his hand over them. "What's the ante?" he asked. "Oh, five hundred?" McNally replied. Blaney pushed the cards back. "No," he said, "not enough." Williams seconded his chief with a shake of the head. "Well, name it yourself." "A thousand."
"Before we go any further, I want to know more about this business. I've taken your word so far that we would be backed up all right, and I hope we are. But I can't afford to be beaten, and if Weeks isn't clean busted up, he'll hound me to death. I've got to know more about this business." Blaney looked out of the window. "Seems to me you're pretty late with that talk about not going in," he said.
"Good heavens! What is the matter?" exclaimed Cecilia, who knew very well what was coming. "Oh, the wretch! He has made such proposals!" "Proposals! What proposals? What! Lord Blaney?" cried Miss Ossulton. "Oh, he's no lord! He's a villain and a smuggler! And he insists that we shall both fill our pockets full of lace, and go on shore with him." "Mercy on me!
He wanted me to fix it up so things would go his way in the Council, and I told him that I'd do what I could. I came around to you to see if your crowd were going to do anything about it." The coolness of the inquiry almost stupefied Blaney, but he managed to speak. "I'd like to know," he said, "what business that is of yours, anyway." "It's my business, right enough," said Bridge, easily.
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