“MR. GUNNING WAS LOOKIN’ OUT FOR A COB.”
“I was up in Dublin meself the same time,” pursued Mr. Fennessy. “Afther I seein’ Patsey I took a sthroll down to Brennan’s yard. The leg was in two halves, barrin’ the shkin, and the showldher swoll up as big as a sack o’ meal. I was three or four days goin’ down to look at her this way, and I seen she wasn’t as bad as what they thought. I come in one morning, and the boy says to me, ‘The boss has three horses comin’ in to-day, an’ I dunno where’ll we put this one.’ I goes to Brennan, and he sitting down to his breakfast, and the wife with him. ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘for the honour of God sell me that mare!’ We had hard strugglin’ then. In the latther end the wife says, ‘It’s as good for ye to part her, James,’ says she, ‘and Mr. Gunning’ll never know what way she went. This honest man’ll never say where he got her.’ ‘I will not, ma’am,’ says I. ‘I have a brother in the postin’ line in Belfast, and it’s for him I’m buyin’ her.’”
The process of making nail-holes in the shoe seemed to engross the taciturn young smith’s attention for the next minute or two.
“There was a man over from Craffroe in town yesterday,” he observed presently, “that said Mr. Gunning was lookin’ out for a cob, and he’d fancy one that would lep.”
He eyed his work sedulously as he spoke.
Something, it might have been the light of the candle, woke a flicker in Mr. Fennessy’s eye. He passed his hand gently down the mare’s quarter.
“Supposing now that the mane was off her, and something about six inches of a dock took off her tail, what sort of a cob d’ye think she’d make, Larry?”
The smith, with a sudden falsetto cackle of laughter, plunged the shoe into a tub of water, in which it gurgled and spluttered as if in appreciation of the jest.