"The poor baste do be after cryin' day an' night, like a Christian.
I've told him again an' again, but he's a bad man is Aaron. He's
took after his brother, an' that's sayin' ill enough of anyone. Ye
wouldn't mind Jake Mennin', doctor?"
"No. It was before I came here."
"Sure I've lived neighbors to thim fifteen years, an' I've seen
things to turn your stomach on yer. He had a bad streak in him,
Jake, an' it was the devil took him in the end. They had a little
girl there workin', the year before Jake died.... That's why I tell
Lizzie I'll break her neck before I see her hangin' round there. The
ould mother's a decent woman, or used to be. God knows the poor
soul's had enough to turn her crazy."
"There is a mother, then?"
"Sure, but ye don't see her nowadays. 'Tis Aaron keeps her to the
house, most like. I used to be civil spoke to Aaron a while back,
but sence Jake died there ain't no good to him at all. Would any
Christian man treat a dumb baste the way he does? An' he treats his
ould mother the same, if all's known."
He pulled on his pipe.
"Two weeks ago, it would be, as we saw her last. Yes, I mind now it
was the day I was thinkin' of puttin' the new winder-pane in. She
come over to borry a half-cup o' sugar, an' I says to Mary to let her
have it, the poor soul. She had her hand all wrapped up to here"--he
measured a space on his gaunt grimy wrist--"an' she says to Mary as
she'd scalded it in the kitchen. Aaron was away with the wagon, or
she wouldn't 'a' come then."
"I suppose Aaron does a good business," I said casually.
"By the talk he does. I do be thinkin' he does most of it in the
next county, fur I don't see him drivin' the village way more'n onct
in a week or so. He'll be gone three days on a stretch wid the
wagon, an' Lizzie's seen him come home mornin's wid the poor baste in
a lather. Lizzie says he has hundreds o' chickens there, an' he
can't be after sellin' thim all. They die on him all the time, fur
she's seen him pull 'em out o' the coops and throw 'em to the pigs."
I asked after his son and rose to go, after turning the half of my
tobacco pouch into Paddy's old tin box. It was getting on toward
five o'clock, and I would have just time to clean up, get the mare
put in, and drive to the depot for the afternoon train.