“Nothing of the kind,” replied my father; “she it was who refused me.”
“Bother!” broke in an old squire, a certain Bob French of Frenchmount; “Kitty refuse ten thousand a-year, and a good-looking fellow into the bargain! Kitty's no fool; and she knows mankind just as well as she knows horseflesh,—and, faix, that's not saying a trifle.”
“How is she looking?” asked my father, rather anxious to change the topic.
“Just as you saw her last. She hurt her back at an ugly fence in Kennedy's park, last winter; but she's all right again, and riding the little black mare that killed Morrissy, as neatly as ever!”
“She's a fine dashing girl!” said my father.
“No, but she's a good girl,” said the old squire, who evidently admired her greatly. “She rode eight miles of a dark night, three weeks ago, to bring the doctor to old Hackett's wife, and it raining like a waterfall; and she gave him two guineas for the job. Ay, faith, and maybe at the same time, two guineas was two guineas to her.”
“Why, Mat Dwyer is not so hard-up as that comes to?” exclaimed my father.
“Is n't he, faith? I don't believe he knows where to lay his hand on a fifty-pound note this morning. The truth is, Walter, Mat ran himself out for you.”
“For me! How do you mean for me?”
“Just because he thought you 'd marry Kitty. Oh! you need n't laugh. There 's many more thought the same thing. You remember yourself that you were never out of the house. You used to pretend that Bishop's-Lough was a better cover than your own,—that it was more of a grass country to ride over. Then, when summer came, you took to fishing, as if your bread depended on it; and the devil a salmon you ever hooked.”