The Man in Possession — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- THE MAN IN POSSESSION. to pay bills. Bills, faugh! If they were decent folk at all they’d be only too glad of the honour of serv- ing us, and its not payment. but orders they’d be asking for, until such time as it was perfectly con- venient to settle.” ‘‘]'m afraid that time would be a long way off, father,” said the girl witha sigh. ‘‘ You see they must live also. And however things are managed in Ireland there still exists a prejudice in favor of the payment of just debts in the breast of the English tradesman. I don't know why it should exist, but undoubtedly it does.” ‘‘Yes, more’s the pity,” said Cornelius O’Brien gloomily. ‘‘ However,” he added after a pause, ‘‘ there’s Christmas close at hand now, and they won't be so heathenish as to bother us for a week or two, and meanwhile something might turn up.” The girl looked at him half sadly, half compassion- ately. It was so little use to speak, so little use to suggest. He had always been the same ever since she could remember; genial, thoroughly open-hearted extravagant to folly,and negligent almost to the verge of criminality. The burden of debt and difficulty, the incessant shifts and straits and worries, had killed her mother. Sometimes she wondered if they would kill her, or only harden her. Perhaps the latter was the worse fate of the two, considering what possibil- ities of love and truth and tenderness lay in her nature. : She did not speak for some moments, only the grey eyes continued to look wistfully out at the foggy deserted streets, where the gas lamps still twinkled, COMicloe (Sri C(O)