The conversation flowed on to other themes.
It was nearly dark when the carman took his departure, and the smith, a silent youth with sore eyes, caught hold of one of the grey mare’s fetlocks and told her to “lift!” He examined each hoof in succession by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, raked his fire together, and then, turning to Mr. Fennessy, remarked:—
“Ye’d laugh if ye were here the day I put a slipper on this one, an’ she afther comin’ out o’ the thrain—last June it was. ’Twas one Connolly back from Craffroe side was taking her from the station; him that thrained her for Miss Fitzroy. She gave him the two heels in the face.” The glow from the fire illumined the smith’s sardonic grin of remembrance. “She had a sandcrack in the near fore that time, and there’s the sign of it yet.”
The Cinderella-like episode of the slipper had naturally not entered into Mr. Fennessy’s calcula tions, but he took the unforeseen without a change of countenance.
“Well, now,” he said deliberately, “I was sayin’ to meself on the road a while ago, if there was one this side o’ the counthry would know her it’d be yerself.”
The smith took the compliment with a blink of his sore eyes.
“Annyone’d be hard set to know her now,” he said.
There was a pause, during which a leap of sparks answered each thump of the hammer on the white hot iron, and Mr. Fennessy arranged his course of action.
“Well, Larry,” he said, “I’ll tell ye now what no one in this counthry knows but meself and Patsey Crimmeen. Sure I know it’s as good to tell a thing to the ground as to tell it to yerself!”
He lowered his voice.