I will, however, return to my story. There sat Feemy, apparently perfectly contented with her appearance and occupation, till a tap at the door disturbed her, and in walked Mary Brady, the bride elect.
"Well, Miss Feemy, and how's your beautiful self this morning?"
"And how are you, Mary, now the time is coming so near?"
Mary Brady was a very tall woman, being about the same height as her brother, thirty or thirty-three years of age, with a plain, though good-humoured looking face, over which her coarse hair was divided on the left temple. She had long ungainly limbs, and was very awkward in the use of them, and though not absolutely disagreeable in her appearance, she was so nearly so, that she would hardly have got married without the assistance of the "two small pigs, and thrifle of change," which had given her charms in the eyes both of Ginty and Denis McGovery.
"Oh! Miss Feemy, and I'm fretting so these two days, that is, ever since Denis said it was to be this blessed day,—the Lord help me!—and I with it all on my shouldhers, and the divil a one to lend a hand the laste taste in life."
"Why, Mary, what can there be so much to do at all?"
"Och! then, hadn't I my white dress to get made, and the pair of sheets to get hemmed, for Denis said his'n warn't large enough for him and I,"—and here the Amazon gave a grin of modesty,—"and you know it was part of the bargain, I was to have a pair of new sheets" (Denis had kept this back from Father John in his inventory of his bride's fortune); "and isn't there the supper to get ready, and the things, and the house to ready and all!—and then when I'd done that, it war all for nothing, for the wedding isn't to be at Pat's at all."
"The wedding not to be at Brady's, where is it to be then?"
"Oh, jist at Mrs. Mehan's shop below, at the loch."
"Oh, that's better still, Mary; we won't have so far to go in the mud."