"All right—an hour ago," he cried, and disappeared as quickly as he had come.
"What did he say?" asked Larry, as he saw a look of the utmost pleasure come across Ned M'Grane's face.
"He said," answered Ned, as he folded his arms and leaned his broad shoulder against the wall, "that you've got the best son-in-law in Ireland, an' that Seumas Shanley has the purtiest an' the sweetest little wife that ever stepped in shoe leather!"
"What do you mean, man; what do you mean?" cried Larry in an angry and excited tone, as he gripped the blacksmith by the arm. "Are you mad, Ned M'Grane?"
"No, Larry, my decent man; I'm not mad, an' I only mean what I say, an' that is that the best part o' the charm that's after bein' worked is that while you were gettin' the pain taken out o' your jaw here, your daughter and Seumas Shanley were gettin' the pain taken out o' their hearts by Father Martin above at the chapel—long life to them!
"The boys an' girls o' Drumberagh are dancin' at their weddin' for the last half-hour, an' every tongue in the country is talkin' o' the Blacksmith's Charm."
[HOW JIMMY SETTLED THE SOJER]
It would be very unjust to say that Ned M'Grane was insufferably vain on account of his storytelling abilities, or that he was a bore who insisted, whenever he could find an audience, on relating some of his wonderful and thrilling experiences, as a goodly number of those who pose as storytellers are in the habit of doing. That wasn't the way with Ned at all: he had acquired all his pleasant stories, or most of them, while he was a boy, unspoiled by travel or by contact with the "clever" world; and it never struck him that he occupied a unique or exalted position in the Glen on account of this, because the gift had come to him naturally, and had been cultivated at a time when there was a seanchaidhe by every hearth, and life and vivacity in the country to provide plenty of material for stories. And in reference to the second matter—the supposition or suspicion in the minds of my readers that Ned was a bore—if such a suspicion exists, there is no foundation whatever for it. Ned M'Grane was not a bore by any means: I never knew him to volunteer the telling of a story, and I think that if we were to remain in the forge for hours each evening and not ask for a story we should never have heard one. I firmly believe that if Ned were to think for a moment that while we listened to his stories we were under the impression, in our own minds, that he was "showin' off" all he knew—I firmly believe that then and there he would have made a vow never again to tell us a story, and I know he would have kept that vow, because Ned M'Grane was a man of his word. Whenever an occasion arose that would suggest a story (we never asked him direct for one) we cautiously felt our way, and then, if we saw that we were on safe ground, we asked him as delicately as we could, to give us the pleasure of listening to one of his stories, and I have never known him to deny us that pleasure. He knew that we hungered for the tales, and his heart was too big and too kind to allow him to refrain from an act that was likely to give pleasure to anyone. There never beat a warmer, kinder heart than that which throbbed beneath Ned M'Grane's torn and soot-stained coat.