“Did anny wan iver see the like of thim hins?” demanded Mrs. Sweeny, dramatically, while she dragged forward a greasy-looking kitchen chair. “I’m fairly heart-scalded with them—the monkeys of the world! Sit down, ochudth, sit down why!” she went on, addressing me, her broad red face beaming with pride and hospitality. “Indeed, me little place isn’t fit for the likes of ye! Sure, wouldn’t ye sit down, Masther Willy, till I get ye a dhrink of milk? Run away, Bridgie”—this in an undertone to a grimy little girl—“and dhrive in the cows.”
She produced another chair for Willy, the discrepancy in the length of whose legs was corrected by a convenient dip in the mud floor of the cottage, and Willy sat down, and at once began a diffuse and cheerful conversation with her.
The fates certainly seemed to be against me. This shower would probably last for some time, and it would be impossible to say that I wanted to go home until it was over. I looked at my watch; it was already nearly four. Nugent would very likely come early—he had said that he would be over some time before tea—and would hear that I had gone out, and had left no message or explanation of any kind for him. It was very exasperating, but, as long as this deluge of rain lasted, all I could do was to sit still and possess my soul in as much patience as possible.
The cabin had more occupants than, in its doubtful light, I had at first noticed. In the smoky shadow of the overhanging chimney-place was huddled, on a three-legged stool, a very small old man in knee-breeches and a tail-coat, who was smoking a short pipe, and still held in his hand the battered tall hat which he had taken off on our entrance. He was our hostess’s father-in-law, one of the oldest tenants on the estate, and he sat, as I had often seen the old country men in the cabins sit, smoking and dozing over the fire, and looking hardly more alive to what was going on than the grey, smouldering lumps of turf on the hearth. In the dusky recess at the foot of a four-poster bed, which blocked up one of the small windows, Batty and two other children were hiding behind each other, and were staring at us as young birds might. Pat and Jinny were vulgarly snuffing among Mrs. Sweeny’s pots and pans, with an affectation of starvation which but ill-assorted with what I knew of their recent luncheon. Now they had come, with stunning unexpectedness, on a cat, crouched on the dresser, and, when called off by Willy on the very eve of battle, remained for the rest of their visit in agonized contemplation of her security. From a hencoop in the corner by the bed came faint cluckings; the goose which Mrs. Sweeny had been plucking lay with its legs tied beside the red earthen pan, in which it might have seen its own breast feathers, and tried to console itself by pecking feebly at the yellow meal which had been spilt on the ground in front of the chickens’ coop.
Mrs. Sweeny was sitting on a kind of rough settle, between the other window and the door of an inner room. She was a stout, comfortable-looking woman of about forty, with red hair and quick blue eyes, that roved round the cabin, and silenced with a glance the occasional whisperings that rose from the children.
“And how’s the one that had the bad cough?” asked Willy, pursuing his conversation with her with his invariable ease and dexterity. “Honor her name is, isn’t it?”
“See, now, how well he remembers!” replied Mrs. Sweeny. “Indeed, she’s there back in the room, lyin’ these three days. Faith, I think ’tis like the decline she have, Masther Willy.”
“Did you get the doctor to her?” said Willy. “I’ll give you a ticket if you haven’t one.”
“Oh, indeed, Docthor Kelly’s afther givin’ her a bottle, but shure I wouldn’t let her put it into her mouth at all. God knows what’d be in it. Wasn’t I afther throwin’ a taste of it on the fire to thry what’d it do, and Phitz! says it, and up with it up the chimbley! Faith, I’d be in dread to give it to the child. Shure, if it done that in the fire, what’d it do in her inside?”
“Well, you’re a greater fool than I thought you were,” said Willy, politely.