“’Twas Mr. Gunning of Streamstown bought that one from Miss Fitzroy at the Dublin Show, and a hundhred pound he gave for her!”
The smith mentally docked this sum by seventy pounds, but said, “By dam!” in polite convention.
“’Twasn’t a week afther that I got her for twinty-five pounds!”
The smith made a further mental deduction equally justified by the facts; the long snore and wheeze of the bellows filled the silence, and the dirty walls flushed and glowed with the steady crescendo and diminuendo of the glow.
The ex-tinker picked up the bottle with the candle. “Look at that!” he said, lowering the light and displaying a long transverse scar beginning at the mare’s knee and ending in an enlarged fetlock.
“I seen that,” said the smith.
“And look at that!” continued Mr. Fennessy, putting back the shaggy hair on her shoulder. A wide and shiny patch of black skin showed where the hatter’s plate glass had flayed the shoulder. “She played the divil goin’ through the streets, and made flitthers of herself this way, in a shop window. Gunning give the word to shoot her. The dealer’s boy told Patsey Crimmeen. ’Twas Patsey was caring her at the show for Miss Fitzroy. Shtan’ will ye!”—this to the mare, whose eyes glinted white as she flung away her head from the light of the candle.
“Whatever fright she got she didn’t forget it,” said the smith.
