Evans, that'll do you no harm!"
He established his patient on a garden seat, and left him, moving
slowly until he knew he was no longer in sight; then he swung into the
house, with swift strides that would have compelled a smaller man to
run, if he were to keep level with him.
"Poor old lad!" he thought, compassionately; yet, blended with the
compassion, was the half-unconscious triumph of strong middle-age at
sight of the failure of a senior. "That's the first knock. He'll want
to mind himself from this out--the next one might hit him harder."
CHAPTER XXIII
The back stairs at Mount Music were old and precipitous. To descend
them at high noon demanded circumspection at night, when the armies of
the cockroaches were abroad; and marauding rats came flopping up and
down them, upon their unlawful occasions, only that man of iron,
Robert Evans, was proof to their terrors. Christian, even though
inured from childhood to the backstairs, held her habit skirt high,
and thanked, heaven for her riding-boots, as she made her way down the
worn stone steps, at some half-past four of a September morning.
Mount Music was one of the many houses of its period that, with, to
quote Mrs. Dixon, "the globe of Ireland to build over," had elected to
bestow its menials in dark and complex basements. Christian and her
candle traversed the long maze of underground passages.
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