And then the way in which they were placed! When I saw this the conviction flew across my mind like a flash of lightning that the preparation had been made under other eyes than those of the servant. The heavy big boots were placed so prettily before the chair, and the strings of each were made to dangle down at the sides, as though just ready for tying! They seemed to say, the boots did, “Now, make haste. We at any rate are ready—you cannot say that you were kept waiting for us.” No mere servant’s hand had ever enabled a pair of boots to laugh at one so completely.
But what was I to do? I rushed at the small portmanteau, thinking that my pumps also might be there. The woman surely could not have been such a fool as to send me those tons of iron for my evening wear! But, alas, alas! no pumps were there. There was nothing else in the way of covering for my feet; not even a pair of slippers.
And now what was I to do? The absolute magnitude of my misfortune only loomed upon me by degrees. The twenty minutes allowed by that stern old paterfamilias were already gone and I had done nothing towards dressing. And indeed it was impossible that I should do anything that would be of avail. I could not go down to dinner in my stocking feet, nor could I put on my black dress trousers, over a pair of mud-painted top-boots. As for those iron-soled horrors—; and then I gave one of them a kick with the side of my bare foot which sent it halfway under the bed.
But what was I to do? I began washing myself and brushing my hair with this horrid weight upon my mind. My first plan was to go to bed, and send down word that I had been taken suddenly ill in the stomach; then to rise early in the morning and get away unobserved. But by such a course of action I should lose all chance of any further acquaintance with those pretty girls! That they were already aware of the extent of my predicament, and were now enjoying it—of that I was quite sure.
What if I boldly put on the shooting-boots, and clattered down to dinner in them? What if I took the bull by the horns, and made, myself, the most of the joke? This might be very well for the dinner, but it would be a bad joke for me when the hour for dancing came. And, alas! I felt that I lacked the courage. It is not every man that can walk down to dinner, in a strange house full of ladies, wearing such boots as those I have described.
Should I not attempt to borrow a pair? This, all the world will say, should have been my first idea. But I have not yet mentioned that I am myself a large-boned man, and that my feet are especially well developed. I had never for a moment entertained a hope that I should find anyone in that house whose boot I could wear. But at last I rang the bell. I would send for Jack, and if everything failed, I would communicate my grief to him.
I had to ring twice before anybody came. The servants, I well knew, were putting the dinner on the table. At last a man entered the room, dressed in rather shabby black, whom I afterwards learned to be the butler.
“What is your name, my friend?” said I, determined to make an ally of the man.
“My name? Why Larry sure, yer honer. And the masther is out of his sinses in a hurry, becase yer honer don’t come down.”
“Is he though? Well now, Larry; tell me this; which of all the gentlemen in the house has got the largest foot?”
“Is it the largest foot, yer honer?” said Larry, altogether surprised by my question.
“Yes; the largest foot,” and then I proceeded to explain to him my misfortune. He took up first my top-boot, and then the shooting-boot—in looking at which he gazed with wonder at the nails;—and then he glanced at my feet, measuring them with his eye; and after this he pronounced his opinion.
“Yer honer couldn’t wear a morsel of leather belonging to ere a one of ’em, young or ould. There niver was a foot like that yet among the O’Conors.”
“But are there no strangers staying here?”
“There’s three or four on ’em come in to dinner; but they’ll be wanting their own boots I’m thinking. And there’s young Misther Dillon; he’s come to stay. But Lord love you—” and he again looked at the enormous extent which lay between the heel and the toe of the shooting apparatus which he still held in his hand. “I niver see such a foot as that in the whole barony,” he said, “barring my own.”
Now Larry was a large man, much larger altogether than myself, and as he said this I looked down involuntarily at his feet; or rather at his foot, for as he stood I could only see one. And then a sudden hope filled my heart. On that foot there glittered a shoe—not indeed such as were my own which were now resting ingloriously at Ballyglass
