feeling all the pleasure in life, just watching them, with their soft,
little muzzles down in the warm, sweet milk, snorting with the pure
enjoyment. But Mickey was only grousing to get done, and vexed at the
way the big calves were shoving the little ones away, and still he
couldn't hinder them. Art used to regulate them very simple by means of
a little ash quick he kept, to slap the forward calves across the face
when they'd get too impudent. But as often as Mickey had seen him do
that, he couldn't do the same. The ash quick was so close to him that if
it had been any nearer it would have bitten him. Stuck up in a corner of
the bit of ruin that had once been Castle Heffernan it was. But it might
as well have been in America for all the good it was to Mickey.
"I wish to God I was rid of the whole of yous, this minute!" says he to
himself, and he with his face all red and steamy, and the milk
slobbering out of the pail down upon the ground, the way the calves were
butting him about the legs.
That very minute, he heard a sound behind him. He turned about, and, my
dear! the heart jumped into his mouth, as he saw a great, immense red
face, just peeping over the wall that shut in his yard from the boreen.
That wall was no more than four feet high. Wouldn't anyone think it
strange to see such a face, only that far from the ground! and it with a
bushy, black beard around it, and big rolling eyes, and a wide, old hat
cocked back upon it? You'd have to think it was something "not right";
an Appearance or Witchery work of some kind.
But, let alone that, isn't there something very terrifying and frightful
in finding yourself being watched, when you think you're alone; and of
all things, by a man? The worst of a wild beast wouldn't put the same
bad fear in your heart.
"Good evening, Mr. Heffernan," says the newcomer, with a grin upon him,
free and pleasant; "that's a fine lot of calves you have there!"
Heffernan was so put about that he made no answer, and the man went on
to say, "Is it that you don't know me? Sure, you couldn't forget poor
old Hopping Hughie as simple as that!"
And he gave himself a shove, so that he raised his shoulders above the
wall. A brave, big pair they were, too, but they were only just held up
on crutches. Hughie could balance himself upon them, and get about, as
handy as you please. But he was dead of his two legs.
"Oh, Hughie...!" says Heffernan, pretty stiff; "well, and what do you
want here?"
"Och, nothing in life...."
"Take it, then, and let you be off about your business!" says Mickey, as
quick as a flash, for once; and he that was proud when he had it said!
Hughie had a most notorious tongue himself, but he knew when to keep it
quiet, and he thought it as good to appear very mild and down in himself
now, so he said, "My business! sure, what word is that to say to a poor
old fellah on chrutches! Not like you, Mr. Heffernan, that'll be off to
the fair of Balloch to-morrow morning, bright and early, with them grand
fine calves of yours. The price they'll go! There isn't the peel of them
in Ardenoo!"
"Do you tell me that?" says Heffernan, that a child could cheat.
"That's what they do be telling me," says Hughie. He could build a nest
in your ear, he was that cunning. He thought he saw a chance of getting
to the fair himself, and a night's lodging as well, if he managed right.
"I wish to goodness I could get them there, so," says Mickey, "and
hasn't one to drive them for me!"
"Would I do?" says Hughie.
Heffernan looked at him up and down.
"Sure you'd not be able!"
"Whoo! me not able? Maybe I'm like the singed cat, better than I look!
I'm slow, but fair and easy goes far in a day! Never you fear but I'll
get your calves to Balloch the same way the boy ate the cake, very
handy...."
The simplest thing would have been for Heffernan to take and drive the
calves himself. But he never had the fashion of doing such things.
Anyway, it wouldn't answer for the people to see a man with a good means
of his own, like Mickey, turning drover that way.
So he thought again, while Hughie watched him, and then says he, "You'll
have to be off out of this before the stars have left the sky!"
"And why wouldn't I?" says Hughie; "only give me a bit of supper and a
shakedown for the night, the way I'll be fresh for the road to-morrow."
Hughie was looking to be put sitting down in the kitchen alongside
Heffernan himself, and to have the settle-bed foreninst the fire to
sleep in. But he had to content himself with the straw in the barn and a
plateful carried out to him. Queer and slow-going Heffernan might be,
but he wasn't thinking of having the likes of Hopping Hughie in his
chimney-corner, where he had often thought to see little Rosy Rafferty
and she smiling at him.
Hughie took it all very contented. Gay and happy he was after his
supper, and soon fell asleep on the straw, with his ragged pockets that
empty that the divil could dance a hornpipe in them and not strike a
copper there; while Mickey above in bed in his own house, with his fine
farm and all his stock about him, calves and cows and pigs, not to speak
of the money in the old stocking under the thatch ... Mickey couldn't
sleep, only worrying, thinking was he right to go to sell the calves at
all; and to be letting Hughie drive them!
"I had little to do," he thought, "to be letting him in about the place
at all, and couldn't tell what divilment he might be up to, as soon as
he gets me asleep! Hughie's terrible wicked, and as strong as a ditch! I
done well to speak him civil, anyway. But I'll not let them calves stir
one peg out of this with him! I'd sooner risk keeping them longer...."
There's the way he was going on, tossing and tumbling and tormenting
himself, as if bed wasn't a place to rest yourself in and not be raking
up annoyances.
So it wasn't till near morning that Mickey dozed off, and never wakened
till it was more than time to be off to the fair.
Up he jumped and out to stop Hughie. But the yard was silent and empty.
Hughie and the calves were gone.
Mickey was more uneasy than ever.
"A nice bosthoon I must be," he thought, "to go trust my good-looking
calves to a k'nat like Hughie! And he to go off without any breakfast,
too...!"
Heffernan was a good warrant to feed man or beast. But he mightn't have
minded about Hughie, that had plenty of little ways of providing for
himself. His pockets would be like sideboards, the way he would have
them stuck out with meat and eggs, and so on, that he would be given
along the road. Hughie was better fed than plenty that bestowed food
upon him.
Balloch, where the fair is held, is the wildest and most lonesome place
in Ardenoo, with a steep, rough bit of road leading up to it, very
awkward to drive along. Up this comes Heffernan, on his sidecar, driving
his best, and in a great hurry to know where he would come on Hughie. He
had it laid out in his own mind that sight nor light of his calves he
never would get in this world again. So it was a great surprise to him
to find them there before him, safe and sound. His heart lightened at
that as if a mill-stone was lifted off it.
And the fine appearance there was upon them. Not a better spot in the
fair-green than where Hughie had them, opposite a drink-tent where the
people would be thronging most! And it was a choice spot for Hughie too.
Happy and contented he was, his back against a tree, leaning his weight
on one crutch and the other convenient to his hand.
"So there's where you are," says Hughie, a bit scornful. Sure it was a
foolish remark to pass and the man there before him, as plain as the
nose on your face. But Hughie was puzzled too by the look of relief he
saw on Mickey's face. He understood nothing of what Heffernan was
passing through. It's an old saying and a true one, "Them that has the
world has care!" but them that hasn't it, what do they know about it?
While Hughie was turning this over in his mind, Mickey was throwing an
eye upon the calves, and then, seeing they were all right, he was
bandying off with himself, when Hughie said, "Terrible dry work it is,
driving stock along them dusty roads since the early morning," and he
rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth with a grin.
At that, Mickey put his hand into his pocket and felt round about, and
then pulled it out empty.
"I'll see you later, Hughie," says he, "I'll not forget you, never fear!
Just let you wait here till I have the poor mare attended to that drew
me here...."
So he went off to do this, and then into the drink-tent with him, the
way he could be getting a sup himself. But no sign of he to give
anything to Hughie. And there now is where Mickey made a big mistake.
He met up with a couple or three that he was acquainted with in the
tent, and they began to talk of this thing and that thing, so that it
was a gay little while before Mickey came out again.
When he did: "What sort is the drink in there, Mr. Heffernan?" says
Hughie.
Now what Mickey had taken at that time was no more than would warm the
cockles of his heart. So he looked quite pleasant and said, "Go in
yourself, Hughie, and here's what will enable you to judge it!"
And he held out a shilling to Hughie.
"A bird never yet flew upon the one wing, Mr. Heffernan!" said Hughie,
that was looking to get another shilling, and that would be only his due
for driving the calves.
Mickey said nothing one way or the other, only went off, and left Hughie
standing there, holding out his hand in front of him with the shilling
in it, lonesome.
He that was vexed! He got redder in the face than ever, and gave out a
few curses, till he remembered there wasn't one to hear him. So he
stopped and went into the tent and I needn't say he got the best value
he could there.
But all the time he was thinking how badly Heffernan was after treating
him, putting him off without enough to see him through the fair even,
let alone with a trifle in his pockets to help him on his rounds. He
began planning how he could pay out Mickey.
He got himself back to the same spot, near the calves, to see what would
happen. After a time, he saw Heffernan coming back, and little Barney
Maguire with him. A very decent boy Barney was, quiet and agreeable;
never too anxious for work, but very knowledgable about how things
should be done, from a wake to a sheep-shearing. Heffernan always liked
to have Barney with him at a fair.
The two of them stood near the calves, careless-like, as if they took no
interest in them at all.
A dealer came up.
"How much for them calves? Not that I'm in need of the like," says he.
"Nobody wants you to take them, so," says Barney, "but the price is
three pounds ... or was it guineas you're after saying, Mr. Heffernan?"
Heffernan said nothing, and the dealer spoke up very fierce; "Three
pounds! Put thirty shillings on them, and I'll be talking to ye!"
Mickey again only looked at his adviser, and says Barney, "Thirty
shillings! 'Tis you that's bidding wide, this day! May the Lord forgive
you! Is it wanting a present you are of the finest calves in Ardenoo?"
Heffernan swelled out with delight at that; as if Barney's word could
make his calves either better or worse.
"Wasn't it fifty-seven and sixpence you're after telling me you were
offered only yesterday, Mr. Heffernan," says Barney, "just for the small
ones of the lot?"
"Och! I dare say! don't you?" says the dealer; "the woman that owns you
it was that made you that bid, to save your word!"
Poor Mickey! and he hadn't a woman at all! The dealer of course being
strange couldn't know that, nor why Hughie gave a laugh out of him.
But that didn't matter. Mickey took no notice. A man that's a bit
"thick" escapes many a prod that another would feel sharp. So in all
things you can see how them that are afflicted are looked after in some
little way we don't know.
The dealer looked at the calves again.
"Troth, I'm thinking it's the wrong ones yous have here! Yous must have
forgotten them fine three-pound calves at home!"
And Mickey began looking very anxiously at them, as he thought maybe he
had made some mistake.
"Them calves," says the dealer, slowly, "isn't like a pretty girl, that
everyone will be looking to get! And, besides, they're no size! A
terrible small calf they are!"
"Small!" said Barney, "It's too big they are! And if they're little
itself, what harm! Isn't a mouse the prettiest animal you might ask to
see?"
"Ay, it is," says the dealer, "but it'll take a power of mice to stock a
farm!" and off with him in a real passion--by the way of.
But Barney knew better than to mind. The dealer came back, and at long
last the calves were sold and paid for. Then the lucky-penny had to be
given. Hard-set Barney was to get Heffernan to do that. In the end
Mickey was so bothered over it that he dropped a shilling just where
Hughie was standing leaning his weight on the one crutch as usual.
As quick as a flash, he had the other up, and made a kind of a lurch
forward, as if to look for the money. But he managed to get the second
crutch down upon the shilling, to hide it; and then he looked round
about the ground as innocent as a child, as if he was striving his best
to find the money for Mickey.
"Where should it be, at all, at all?" says Mickey; "bewitched it should
be, to say it's gone like that!"
And Heffernan, standing there with his mouth open, looked as if he had
lost all belonging to him. Then he began searching about a good piece
off from where the shilling fell.
"It's not there you'll get it!" said Barney, "sure you ought always look
for a thing where you lost it!"
He went over to Hughie.
"None of your tricks, now! It's you has Mr. Heffernan's money, and let
you give it up to him!"
"Is it me have it? Sure if I had, what would I do, only hand it over to
the man that owns it!" says Hughie.
On the word, he let himself down upon the ground, and slithered over on
top of the shilling.
But, quick and all as he was, Barney was quicker.
"Sure, you have it there, you vagabone, you! Give it up, and get off out
of this with yourself!"
And he caught Hughie a clip on the side of the head that sent him
sprawling on the broad of his back. And there, right enough, under him,
was the shilling.
So Barney picked it up, and for fear of any other mistake, he handed it
to the dealer.
"It's an ugly turn whatever, to be knocking a poor cripple about
that-a-way!" said the dealer, dropping the lucky-penny into his pocket.
"Ach, how poor he is, and let him be crippled, itself!" says Barney;
"it's easy seeing you're strange to Ardenoo, or you'd not be
compassionating Hughie so tender!"
No more was said then, only in the tent with them again to wet the
bargain. Hughie gathered himself up. He was in the divil's own temper.
Small blame to him, too! Let alone the disappointment about the
shilling, and the knock Barney gave him, the people all had a laugh at
him. And he liked that as little as the next one. You'd think he'd curse
down the stars out of the skies this time, the way he went on.
And it wasn't Barney's clout he cared about, half as much as Mickey's
meanness. It was that had him so mad. He felt he must pay Heffernan out.
He considered a bit; then he gave his leg a slap.
"I have it now!" he said to himself.
He beckoned two young boys up to him, that were striving to sell a load
of cabbage plants they had there upon the donkey's back, and getting bad
call for them.
"It's a poor trade yous are doing to-day," said Hughie; "and I was
thinking in meself yous should be very dry. You wouldn't care to earn
the price of a pint?"
"How could we?" says the boys.
"I'll tell you! Do you see that car?" and Hughie pointed to where
Heffernan had left his yoke drawn up, and the old mare cropping a bit as
well as she could, being tied by the head; "well, anyone that will pull
the linch-pin out of the wheel, on the far side of the car, needn't be
without tuppence to wet his whistle...." and Hughie gave a rattle to a
few coppers he had left in his pocket.
"Yous'll have to be smart about it, too," said he, "or maybe whoever
owns that car will have gone off upon it, afore yous have time to do the
primest bit of fun that ever was seen upon this fair green!"
"Whose is the car?"
"Och, if I know!" says Hughie; "but what matter for that? One man is as
good as another at the bottom of a ditch! ay, and better. It will be the
height of divarshin to see the roll-off they'll get below there at the
foot of the hill...."
"Maybe they'd get hurted!" said the boys.
"Hurted, how-are-ye!" says Hughie; "how could anyone get hurted so
simple as that? I'd be the last in the world to speak of such a thing in
that case! But if yous are afraid of doing it...."
"Afraid! that's queer talk to be having!" says one of them, very stiff,
for like all boys, he thought nothing so bad as to have "afraid" said to
him; "no, but we're ready to do as much as the next one!"
"I wouldn't doubt yiz!" said Hughie; "h-away with the two of you, now!
Only mind! don't let on a word of this to any sons of man...."
Off they went, and Hughie turned his back on them and the car, and
stared at whatever was going on the other end of the fair. He hadn't
long to wait, before Heffernan and Barney and the dealer came out of the
drink-tent. Hughie took a look at them out of the corner of his eye.
"Ah!" he said to himself, "all 'purty-well-I-thank-ye!' after what they
drank inside! But, wait a bit, Mickey Heffernan...."
The three men went over to where Heffernan's car was waiting. The boys
were gone. The other two men helped Mickey to get his yoke ready. Then
he got up, and they shook hands a good many times. Heffernan chucked at
the reins and started off.
Hughie was watching, and when he saw how steadily the old mare picked
her way down the steep boreen, he began to be afraid he hadn't hit on
such a very fine plan at all. And if Mickey had only had the wit to
leave it all to the poor dumb beast, she might have brought him home
safe enough.
But nothing would to him, only give a shout and a flourish of the whip,
half-way down the hill. The mare started and gave a jump. She was big
and awk'ard, much like Mickey himself. Still it was no fault of her
that, when she got to the turn, the wheel came off, and rolled away to
one side. Down came the car, Mickey fell off, and there he lay, till
some people that saw what was going on ran down the hill after him, and
got the mare on to her feet, and not a scratch on her.
But poor Mickey! It was easy to see with half an eye that he was badly
hurt.
"Someone will have to drive him home, whatever," said Barney, coming up
the hill to look for more help, after doing his best to get Mickey to
stand up; and sure, how was he to do that, upon a broken leg? "A poor
thing it is, too, to see how a thing of the kind could occur so simple!
and a decent man like Heffernan to be nigh hand killed...."
"'Deed, and he is a decent man!" said Hughie; "and why wouldn't he? I'd
be a decent man meself if I had the Furry Farm and it stocked...."
"He's in a poor way now, in any case," said Barney. "I doubt will he
ever get over this rightly! That's apt to be a leg to him all his life!"
"Well, and so, itself!" said Hughie; "haven't I two of them lame legs?
and who thinks to pity Hughie?"
"It's another matter altogether, with a man like Mr. Heffernan," said
Barney; "what does the like of you miss, by not being able to get about,
compared with a man that might spend his time walking a-through his
cattle, and looking at his crops growing, every day in the week?"
"To be sure, he could be doing all that!" said Hughie, "but when a thing
of this kind happens out so awkward, it's the will of God, and the will
of man can't abate that!"
Trinket's Colt.
_From "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M."_
BY E. OE. SOMERVILLE AND MARTIN ROSS.
It was petty sessions day in Skebawn, a cold, grey day in February. A
case of trespass had dragged its burden of cross-summonses and
cross-swearing far into the afternoon, and when I left the bench my head
was singing from the bellowings of the attorneys, and the smell of their
clients was heavy upon my palate.
The streets still testified to the fact that it was market day, and I
evaded with difficulty the sinuous course of carts full of soddenly
screwed people, and steered an equally devious one for myself among the
groups anchored round the doors of the public-houses. Skebawn possesses,
among its legion of public-houses, one establishment which timorously,
and almost imperceptibly, proffers tea to the thirsty. I turned in
there, as was my custom on court days, and found the little dingy den,
known as the Ladies' Coffee Room, in the occupancy of my friend Mr.
Florence McCarthy Knox, who was drinking strong tea and eating buns with
serious simplicity. It was a first and quite unexpected glimpse of that
domesticity that has now become a marked feature in his character.
"You're the very man I wanted to see," I said, as I sat down beside him
at the oilcloth covered table; "a man I know in England who is not much
of a judge of character has asked me to buy him a four-year-old down
here, and as I should rather be stuck by a friend than a dealer, I wish
you'd take over the job."
Flurry poured himself out another cup of tea, and dropped three lumps of
sugar into it in silence.
Finally he said, "There isn't a four-year-old in this country that I'd
be seen dead with at a pig fair."
This was discouraging, from the premier authority on horseflesh in the
district.
"But it isn't six weeks since you told me you had the finest filly in
your stables that was ever foaled in the County Cork," I protested;
"what's wrong with her?"
"Oh, is it that filly?" said Mr. Knox, with a lenient smile; "she's gone
these three weeks from me. I swapped her and L6 for a three-year-old
Ironmonger colt, and after that I swapped the colt and L19 for that
Bandon horse I rode last week at your place, and after that again I sold
the Bandon horse for L75 to old Welply, and I had to give him back a
couple of sovereigns luck-money. You see, I did pretty well with the
filly after all."
"Yes, yes--oh, rather," I assented, as one dizzily accepts the
propositions of a bimetallist; "and you don't know of anything
else----?"
The room in which we were seated was closed from the shop by a door with
a muslin-curtained window in it; several of the panes were broken, and
at this juncture two voices, that had for some time carried on a
discussion, forced themselves upon our attention.
"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, ma'am," said the voice of
Mrs. McDonald, proprietress of the tea-shop, and a leading light in
Skebawn Dissenting circles, shrilly tremulous with indignation, "if the
servants I recommend you won't stop with you, it's no fault of mine. If
respectable young girls are set picking grass out of your gravel, in
place of their proper work, certainly they will give warning!"
The voice that replied struck me as being a notable one, well-bred and
imperious.
"When I take a bare-footed slut out of a cabin, I don't expect her to
dictate to me what her duties are!"
Flurry jerked up his chin in a noiseless laugh. "It's my grandmother!"
he whispered. "I bet you Mrs. McDonald don't get much change out of
her!"
"If I set her to clean the pig-sty I expect her to obey me," continued
the voice in accents that would have made me clean forty pig-stys had
she desired me to do so.
"Very well, ma'am," retorted Mrs. McDonald, "if that's the way you treat
your servants, you needn't come here again looking for them. I consider
your conduct is neither that of a lady nor a Christian!"
"Don't you, indeed?" replied Flurry's grandmother. "Well, your opinion
doesn't greatly distress me, for, to tell you the truth, I don't think
you're much of a judge."
"Didn't I tell you she'd score?" murmured Flurry, who was by this time
applying his eye to the hole in the muslin curtain. "She's off," he went
on, returning to his tea. "She's a great character! She's eighty-three,
if she's a day, and she's as sound on her legs as a three-year-old! Did
you see that old shandrydan of hers in the street a while ago, and a
fellow on the box with a red beard on him like Robinson Crusoe? That old
mare that was on the near side, Trinket her name is--is mighty near
clean bred. I can tell you her foals are worth a bit of money."
I had heard of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas; indeed, I had seldom dined out
in the neighbourhood without hearing some new story of her and her
remarkable menage, but it had not yet been my privilege to meet her.