A bird of passage

by B. M. Croker

"You!" shrieked her cousin. "Are you mad?"

"Now, just please to listen quietly, both of you," she returned with decision.

"In the first place, I'm a stranger to all but the Reids and Redmonds—that's one point," reckoning on her fingers. "In the second, I can get myself up in character so that you would never know me. Thirdly, I flatter myself that my brogue is undeniable. Fourthly, I've plenty of confidence. Fifthly, I mean to go."

"Helen, you are not serious?" said Dido, gravely.

"Never more so, my dear.—I know the market prices as well as yourselves. I shall dress myself up in an old garden frock and sun-bonnet, and you will see if I don't pass off as a good-looking slip of a country girl. You know very well you can't tell my brogue from Sally's in the dark, so I will be your market woman, ladies, and come home to-morrow with my pocket full of money, 'an ye may make your minds quite aisy about me,'" suddenly adopting a brogue and dropping a curtsey. "No one will know a hate about it, barrin' the Masther and meeself."

At this her cousins burst out laughing, and finding that she was so sanguine, and so resolute, and that all their expostulations were uttered to deaf ears, they submitted to the scheme without further demur. Of course Sally was taken into the secret, and when the subject was very gently broken to her by her smiling, would-be deputy, at first she held up her hands dramatically, and invoked both the local and her own patron saints; but in the end she came round. Her thrifty soul revolted against the wanton waste of all her beautiful cheese and butter, and presently she was instructing Helen (who sat beside the settle, gravely attentive), with immense animation, and impressive authority.

"You'll find the Masther very tough to drive, miss, but he knows every stone of the road, and is acquainted with all the shops, so ye may just lave it to himself; there does be no use in prodding him, or striving to drive him, for his mouth is as hard as the heart of Pharaoh,—and he is that detarmined in his own way, that nations would not hould him! First and foremost, ye go to Clancy's with the butter and the eggs, an' you'll not take less than a shilling a pound, dear, and sevenpence the dozen. She'll bate you down, seeing you are strange, and it's not Sally MacGravy she has to dale with! but just you say, 'Divil a copper less you'll take,' and let on you are going to Dooley's across the street. Afther that I'm thinking you will never be able to stand forenint the fruit and vegetables in the square, so ye might go over to Dooley's in earnest and offer him the vegetables and fruit chape; that's in raison, do ye mind. Then there's the grapes and flowers, I don't know what to say about them at all! They must just take their chance; it's the butter that's lying so heavy on me! With regard to the cowcumbers, and honey, and cream-cheeses, a messman does be in from barracks, a fellow with an eye like a needle in his head, and the deuce for bating you down. Then, wance in a way, ye have the officers' ladies; them's the wans for the flowers, and you'll mind to charge them double, darlin'! that's about all," concluded Sally, coming to the end of her instructions, and her breath, simultaneously.

Next morning, at grey dawn, Helen was astir and dressed; her cousins, who had hardly been able to sleep a wink with excitement, attended her at her early breakfast, poured out her tea, buttered her toast, and surveyed her appearance with subdued giggles and expressions of astonished delight. They assured her repeatedly that they would pass her on the road and never recognize her. She was arrayed in a clean but faded cotton, turned up over a striped dark petticoat, a pink sun-bonnet, a white apron, and a little checked shawl. Certainly she was not quite as like sally as her relations could have wished—which, considering that Sally was bordering on forty, and weighed fourteen stone, was not surprising—but they both emphatically declared that she would readily pass for what she professed to be—"a good-looking slip of a country girl who had taken Sally's place."

"Too good-looking, Helen, dear," said Dido, kissing her as she mounted the cart. "Keep your bonnet pulled well over your eyes, and try and do not show your teeth when you laugh; and above all stick to the brogue!"

These were Dido's final injunctions; and she escorted the cart half-way down the avenue, and then took off her shoe, and threw it after it for luck. The last glimpse Helen caught of her favourite cousin, she was hopping along the damp drive, in quest of the said slipper.