"Faix, I don't rightly know! unless Larry Flood gives you a lift on the mail; ayther that, or you could get an asses' car up the street," indicating a double row of thatched cottages in the distance.
"And when do you think Larry Flood will be here?" inquired the young stranger—ignoring his other humiliating suggestion.
"Troth, an' it would be hard to say!—it entirely depends on the humour he's in—he calls for the letters," pointing to a bag in the doorway, "just as he takes the notion, sometimes he is here at five o'clock, and betimes I've known him call at one in the morning!"
A sudden interruption made him turn his head, and he added, with a triumphant slap of his corduroy leg, "Begorra, you are in luck, Miss,—for here he is now!"
As he spoke, a red outside car, drawn by a wild-looking chestnut, wearing a white canvas collar, and little or no harness, came tearing into the station, amidst a cloud of dust. The driver was a wiry little man, with twinkling eyes, that looked as if they were never closed, a protruding under-lip, and an extravagantly wide mouth. He was dressed in a good suit of dark tweed, and wore a green tie, and a white caubeen.
"What's this ye have with ye, the day, Larry?" demanded one of the idlers, as he narrowly examined the animal between the shafts. "May I never," he added, recoiling a step backwards, and speaking in an awe-struck tone; "if it isn't Finnigan's mare!"
"The divil a less!" rejoined Larry, complacently. "Finnigan could get no good of her, and the old brown was nearly bet up. I'll go bail she'll travel for me," he added, getting off the car as he spoke, and giving the collar a hitch.
But this proud boast was received in ominous silence, and all eyes were now riveted on Mr. Flood's recent purchase—a white-legged, malicious-looking, thorough-bred—that was seemingly not unknown to fame.
"Well," said a man in a blue-tail coat, after a significantly long pause; "it's not that she won't travel for ye, there's no fear of that, I hope you may get some good of her, for she's a great mare entirely—but she takes a power of humouring."
"Shure she knocked Finnigan's new spring car to smithereens ere last week," put in the rider of the coarse-looking brown colt, "not a bit of it was together, but the wheels, and left Finnigan himself for dead on the road. Humouring, how are ye?" he concluded, with a kind of scornful snort.