And then, when they were at this pass, Mr. O'Dwyer came in. He did not interfere much with his daughter in the bar room, but he would occasionally take a dandy of punch there, and ask how things were going on in doors. He was a fat, thickset man, with a good-humoured face, a flattened nose, and a great aptitude for stable occupations. He was part owner of the Kanturk car, as has been before said, and was the proprietor of sundry other cars, open cars and covered cars, plying for hire in the streets of Cork.
"I hope the mare took your honour well down to Kanturk and back again," said he, addressing his elder customer with a chuck of his head intended for a bow.
"I don't know what you call well," said Mr. Mollett. "She hadn't a leg to stand upon for the last three hours."
"Not a leg to stand upon! Faix, then, and it's she'd have the four good legs if she travelled every inch of the way from Donagh-a-Dee to Ti-vora," to which distance Mr. O'Dwyer specially referred as being supposed to be the longest known in Ireland.
"She may be able to do that; but I'm blessed if she's fit to go to Kanturk and back."
"She's done the work, anyhow," said Mr. O'Dwyer, who evidently thought that this last argument was conclusive.
"And a precious time she's been about it. Why, my goodness, it would have been better for me to have walked it. As Sir Thomas said to me—"
"What! did you see Sir Thomas Fitzgerald?"
Hereupon Aby gave his father a nudge; but the father either did not appreciate the nudge, or did not choose to obey it.
"Yes; I did see him. Why shouldn't I?"