“What do you want it for, sir?”
“To keep as the portrait of the prettiest Irish girl I’ve ever seen.”
“What would you say, if I told you I was not Irish?”
“Oh, I say! Come”—and he laughed; “you can scarcely expect me to believe that! Now, please stay still for one moment. There! I’ve taken two.”
“What’s going on here?” said a hoarse voice, and Patsie Maguire came suddenly through a gap in the opposite wall. Patsie, in his dark blue Sunday clothes, looking handsome, ill-tempered, and excited.
“I’m after having my picture took,” explained Mary.
“This is a queer sort of business,” he growled, stepping over the stile, and standing beside her within the gate.
Patsie had “a drop taken,” as the saying is. Raw, bad whisky was working in his veins; his brain was in a state of wild confusion—jealousy and vanity were seething within him, and he had come to the conclusion that he would not let Mary Foley stir a toe out of the place, dead or alive.
“So yer at yer old games,” he began, in a blustering voice, addressing himself to Mary, “talking at the corner, talking to any one. Faith!”—to the strangers—“she’s the gabbiest little divil in Ireland!”
Mary glanced at him furtively. Patsie Maguire was drunk.