But for all that, Shusy, I 'm not going to give up Taddy till I know why,—tho' I did n't say so to her. So I just put up the pink gownd in my drawer, and went up and told the mistress I'd stay; but begged she wouldn't try my nerves that way another time, for my constitution would n't bear repated shocks. I saw she was burstin' to say something, but dar'n't, Shusy, and she tore a lace cuff to tatters while I was talk in'. Well, well, there's no deny in' it, anyhow; manials has many troubles, but they can give a great deal of annoyance and misery if they set about it right You 'd like to hear about Taddy, and I 'll be candid and own that he is n't what would be called handsome in Ireland, though here he is reckoned a fine-looking man. He is six foot four and a half, without shoes, a little bent in the shoulders, has long red hair, and sore eyes; that cums from the snow, for he's out in all weathers—after the pigs. You 're surprised at that, and well you may; for instead of keeping the craytures in a house as we do, and giving them all the filth we can find to eat, they turns them out wild into the woods, to eat beech-nuts, and acorns, and chestnuts; and the beasts grow so wicked that it's not safe for a stranger to go near them; and even the man that guides them they call a "swine-fearer."(1) Taddy is one of these; and when he 's dressed in a goat-skin coat and cap, leather gaiters buttoned on his legs, and reachin' to the hips, and a long pole, with an iron hook and a hatchet at the end of it, and a naked knife, two feet long, at his side, you 'd think the pigs would be more likely to be afraid of him! Indeed, the first time I saw him come into the kitchen, with a great hairy dog they call a fang-hound at his heels, I schreeched out with frite, for I thought them—God forgive me!—the ugliest pare I ever set eyes on. To be sure, the green shade he wore over his eyes, and the beard that grew down to his breast, did n't improve him; but I 've trimmed him up since that; and it's only a slight squint, and two teeth that sticks out at the side of his mouth, that I can't remedy at all!
Paddy Byrne spends his time mock in' him, and makin' pictures of him on the servants' hall with a bit of charcoal. It well becomes a dirty little spalpeen like him to make fun of a man four times his size. His notion of manly beauty is four foot eight, short legs, long breeches and gaiters, with a waistcoat over the hips, and a Jim Crow! A monkey is graceful compared to it!
Taddy is not much given to talkin', but he has told me that he has been on the estate, "with the pigs," he calls it, since he was eight years old; and as he said, another time, that "he was nine-and-twenty years a herd," you can put the two together, and it makes him out thirty-three or thirty-four years of age. He never had any father or mother, which is a great advantage, and, as he remarks, "it's the same to him if there came another Flood and drowned all the world to-morrow!"
Our plans is to live here till we can go and take a bit of land for ourselves; and as Taddy has saved something, and has very good idais about his own advantage, I trust, with the blessin' of the Virgin, that we 'll do very well.
1 Perhaps the accomplished Betty has been led into this
pardonable mistake from the sound of the German epithet
"Schwein-führer."—Editor of "Dodd Correspondence."
This that I tell you now, Shusan, is all in confidence, because to the neighbors, and to Sam Healey, you can say that I am going to be married to a rich farmer that has more pigs—and that's thrue—than ye 'd see in Ballinasloe Fair.
What distresses me most of all is, I can't make out what religion he 's of, if he has any at all! I try him very hard about penance and 'tarnal punishments, but all he says is, "When we 're married I 'll know all about that."
As the mistress writ all about Mary Anne's marriage to Mrs. Galagher, at the house, I don't say anything about it; but he's an ugly crayture, Shusan dear, and there's a hangdog, treach'rous look about him I wonder any young girl could like. The servants, too, knows more of him than they lets on, but, by rayson of their furrin language, there's no coming at it.
Between ourselves, she doesn't take to the marriage at all, for I seen her twice cryin' in her room over some ould letters; but she bundled them up whin she seen me, and tried to laugh.
"I wonder, Betty," says she, "will I ever see Dodsbor-ough again!"