“Is it Kate thin, ma’am?”
“No, it’s not Kate. Who are you, I say; and what d’you want?”
“I’m Biddy, plaze ma’am—from Lynch’s, and I’m wanting to spake to yerself, ma’am—about Miss Anty. She’s very bad intirely, ma’am.”
“What ails her;—and why d’you come here? Why don’t you go to Doctor Colligan, av’ she’s ill; and not come knocking here?”
“It ain’t bad that way, Miss Anty is, ma’am. Av’ you’d just be good enough to open the door, I’d tell you in no time.”
It would, I am sure, be doing injustice to Mrs Kelly to say that her curiosity was stronger than her charity; they both, however, no doubt had their effect, and the door was speedily opened.
“Oh, ma’am!” commenced Biddy, “sich terrible doings up at the house! Miss Anty’s almost kilt!”
“Come out of the cowld, girl, in to the kitchen fire,” said the widow, who didn’t like the February blast, to which Biddy, in her anxiety, had been quite indifferent; and the careful widow again bolted the door, and followed the woman into certainly the warmest place in Dunmore, for the turf fire in the inn kitchen was burning day and night. “And now, tell me what is it ails Miss Anty? She war well enough yesterday, I think, and I heard more of her then than I wished.”
Biddy now pulled her cloak from off her head, settled it over her shoulders, and prepared for telling a good substantial story.
“Oh, Misthress Kelly, ma’am, there’s been disperate doings last night up at the house. We were all hearing, in the morn yesterday, as how Miss Anty and Mr Martin, God bless him!—were to make a match of it,—as why wouldn’t they, ma’am? for wouldn’t Mr Martin make her a tidy, dacent, good husband?”