“I beg yer worships’ pardon,” he said, in deep confusion, “but sure your worships know as well as meself that in Irish we have the one word for your finger or your toe.”
“There’s one thing I know very well anyhow,” said Dr. Lyden, turning to his colleague, “I’ve no more time to waste sitting here talking about old Kit Darcy’s fingers and toes! Let the two o’ them get arbitrators and settle it out of court. There’s nothing between them now only the value of the sheep.”
“Sure I was satisfied to leave it to arbithration, but Darcy wasn’t willin’.” This statement was Sweeny’s.
“So you were willin’ to have arbithration before you came into coort at all?” said Mr. Heraty, eyeing the tall defendant with ominous mildness. “William, ask Darcy is this the case.”
Darcy’s reply, delivered with a slow, sarcastic smile, provoked a laugh from the audience.
“Oh, ho! So that was the way, was it!” cried Mr. Heraty, forgetting to wait for the translation. “Ye had your wife’s cousin to arbithrate! Small blame to Darcy he wasn’t willin’! It’s a pity ye didn’t say your wife herself should arbithrate when ye went about it! You would hardly believe the high opinion Sweeny here has of his wife,” continued the Chairman in illuminative excursus to Dr. Lyden; “sure he had all the women wild below at my shop th’ other night sayin’ his wife was the finest woman in Ireland! Upon my soul he had!”
“If I said that,” growled the unfortunate Sweeny, “it was a lie for me.”
“Don’t ye think it might be a good thing now,” suggested the indefatigable doctor, in his mournful tuneful voice, “to call a few witnesses to give evidence as to whether Mrs. Michael Sweeny is the finest woman in Ireland or no?”
“God knows, gentlemen, it’s a pity ye haven’t more to do this day,” said Sweeny, turning at length upon his tormentors, “I’d sooner pay the price of the sheep than be losin’ me time here this way.”
“See, now, how we’re getting to the rights of it in the latter end,” commented Dr. Lyden imperturbably. “Sweeny began here by saying”—he checked off each successive point on his fingers—“that the sheep wasn’t Darcy’s at all. Then he said that his children of eight and nine years of age were too young to set the dog on the sheep. Then, that if the dog hunted her it was no more than she deserved for constant trespass. Then he said that the sheep was so old and blind that she committed suicide in his end of the lake in order to please herself and to spite him; and, last of all, he tells us that he offered to compensate Darcy for her before he came into court at all!”