“No,” she returned, “nor I don't care either—sorra bit.”
“I met James Cavanagh there below”—he proceeded, still in a whisper, and he fixed his eyes upon her countenance as he spoke. The words, however, produced a most extraordinary effect. A deep blush crimsoned her whole neck and face, until the rush of blood seemed absolutely to become expressive of pain. Her eye, however, did not droop, but turned upon him with a firm and peculiar sparkle. She had been stooping with her mouth near his ear, as the reader knows, but she now stood up quickly, shook back her hair, that had been hanging in natural and silken curls about her blushing cheeks, and exclaimed: “No—no. Let me alone Bryan;” and on uttering these words she hurried into another room.”
“Bryan, you've vexed Dora some way,” observed her sister. “What did you say to her?”
“Nothing that vexed her, I'll go bail,” he replied, laughing; “however, as to what I said to her, Shibby, ax me no questions an' I'll tell you no lies.”
“Becaise I thought she looked as if she was angry,” continued Shibby, “an', you know, it must be a strong provocation that would anger her.”
“Ah, you're fishin' now, Shibby,” he replied, “and many thanks for your good intentions. It's a saycret, an' that's all you're going to know about it. But it's as much as 'll keep you on the look out this month to come; and now you're punished for your curiosity—ha!—ha!—ha! Come, father, if we're to go to Sam Wallace's auction it's time we should think of movin'. Art, go an' help Tom Droogan to bring out the horses. Rise your foot here, father, an' I'll put on your spur for you. We may as well spake to Mr. Fethertonge, the agent, about the leases. I promised we'd call on Gerald Cavanagh, to—an' he'll be waitin' for us—hem!”
His eye here glanced about, but Dora was not visible, and he accordingly seemed to be more at his ease. “I think, father,” he added, “I must trate you to a pair of spurs some of these days. This one, it's clear, has been a long time in the family.”
“Throth, an' on that account,” replied M'Mahon, “I'm not goin' to part wid it for the best pair that ever were made. No, no, Bryan; I like everything that I've known long. When my heart gets accustomed to anything or to anybody”—here he glanced affectionately at his wife—“I can't bear to part wid them, or to think of partin' wid them.”
The horses were now ready, and in a brief space he and his son were decently mounted, the latter smartly but not inappropriately dressed; and M'Mahon himself, with his right spur, in a sober but comfortable suit, over which was a huge Jock, his inseparable companion in every fair, market, and other public place, during the whole year. Indeed, it would not be easy to find two better representatives of that respectable and independent class of Irish yeomanry of which our unfortunate country stands so much in need, as was this man of high integrity and his excellent son.
On arriving at Gerald Cavanagh's, which was on their way to the auction, it appeared that in order to have his company it was necessary they should wait for a little, as he was not yet ready. That worthy man they found in the act of shaving himself, seated very upright upon a chair in the kitchen, his eyes fixed with great steadiness upon the opposite wall, whilst lying between his legs upon the ground was a wooden dish half filled with water, and on a chair beside him a small looking-glass, with its backup, which, after feeling his face from time to time in an experimental manner, he occasionally peeped into, and again laid down to resume the operation.
In the mean time, Mrs. Cavanagh set forward a chair for Tom M'Mahon, and desired her daughter Hannah to place one for Bryan, which she did. The two girls were spinning, and it might have been observed that Kathleen appeared to apply herself to that becoming and feminine employment with double industry after the appearance of the M'Mahons. Kate Hogan was sitting in the chimney corner, smoking a pipe, and as she took it out of her mouth to whiff away the smoke from time to time, she turned her black piercing eyes alternately from Bryan M'Mahon to Kathleen with a peculiar keenness of scrutiny.
“An' how are you all up at Carriglass?” asked Mrs. Cavanagh.
“Indeed we can't complain, thank God, as the times goes,” replied M'Mahon.
“An' the ould grandfather?—musha, but I was glad to see him look so well on Sunday last!”
“Troth he's as stout as e'er a one of us.”
“The Lord continue it to him! I suppose you hard o' this robbery that was done at honest Jemmy Burke's?”
“I did, indeed, an' I was sorry to hear it.”
“A hundre' an' fifty pounds is a terrible loss to anybody in such times.”
“A hundre' an' fifty!” exclaimed M'Mahon—“hut, tut!—no; I thought it was only seventy or eighty. He did not lose so much, did he?”
“So I'm tould.”
“It was two—um—it was two—urn—urn—it was—um—um—it was two hundre' itself,” observed Cavanagh, after he had finished a portion of the operation, and given himself an opportunity of speaking—“it war two hundre' itself, I'm tould, an' that's too much, by a hundre' and ninety-nine pounds nineteen shillings an' eleven pence three fardens, to be robbed of.”
“Troth it is, Gerald,” replied M'Mahon; “but any way there's nothin' but thievin' and robbin' goin'. You didn't hear that we came in for a visit?”
“You!” exclaimed Mrs. Cavanagh—“is it robbed? My goodness, no!”
“Why,” he proceeded, “we'll be able to get over it afore we die, I hope. On ere last night we had two of our fattest geese stolen.”
“Two!” exclaimed Mrs. Cavanagh—“an' at this saison of the! year, too. Well, that same's a loss.”
“Honest woman,” said M'Mahon, addressing Kate Hogan, “maybe you'd give me a draw o' the pipe?”
“Maybe so,” she replied; “an' why wouldn't I? Shough! that is here!”
“Long life to you, Katy. Well,” proceeded the worthy man, “if it was a poor person that wanted them an' that took them from hardship, why God forgive them as heartily as I do: but if they wor stole by a thief, for thievin's sake, I hope I'll always be able to afford the loss of a pair betther than the thief will to do without them; although God mend his or her heart, whichever it was, in the mane time.”
During this chat Bryan and Hanna Cavanagh were engaged in that good-humored badinage that is common to persons of their age and position.
“I didn't see you at Mass last Sunday, Bryan?” said she, laughing; “an' that's the way you attend to your devotions. Upon my word you promise well!”
“I seen you, then,” replied Bryan, “so it seems if I haven't betther eyes I have betther eyesight.”
“Indeed I suppose,” she replied, “you see everything but what you go to see.”
“Don't be too sure of that,” he replied, with an involuntary glance at Kathleen, who seemed to enjoy her sister's liveliness, as was evident from the sweet and complacent smile which beamed upon her features.
“Indeed I suppose you're right,” she replied; “I suppose you go to say everything but your prayers.”
“An' is it in conversation with Jemmy Kelly,” asked Bryan, jocularly, alluding to her supposed admirer, “that you perform your own devotions, Miss Hanna?”
“Hanna, achora,” said the father, “I think you're playin' the second fiddle there—ha! ha! ha!”
The laugh was now general against Hanna, who laughed as loudly, however, as any of them.
“Throth, Kathleen,” she exclaimed, “you're not worth knot's o' straws or you'd help me against this fellow here; have you nothing,” she proceeded, addressing Bryan, and nodding towards her sister, “to say to her? Is everything to fall on my poor