“Maybe I am, faith,” replied Mrs. Sweeny, with a loud laugh of enjoyment. “But if she’s for dyin’, the crayture, she’ll die aisier without thim thrash of medicines; and if she’s for livin’, ’tisn’t thrusting to them she’ll be. Shure, God is good—God is good——”
“Divil a betther!” interjected old Sweeny, unexpectedly.
It was the first time he had spoken, and having delivered himself of this trenchant observation, he relapsed into silence and the smackings at his pipe.
“Don’t mind him at all, your honour, miss,” said his daughter-in-law, seeing my ill-concealed amusement. “Shure, he’s only a silly owld man.”
“He’s a good deal more sensible than you are,” said Willy, returning to the subject of Honor.
The rain poured steadily down. I thought of Nugent, and could fancy his surprise at hearing that I was not at home. It was not, I argued to myself, so much that I was sorry to miss him, as that I hated being rude; and it certainly was rude to have gone out on the day he had settled to come, without even leaving a message. What an amazing gift of the gab Willy had! Rain or no rain, it was clear that he and Mrs. Sweeny meant to talk to one another for the rest of the afternoon.
The old man in the chimney-corner had watched me during all this time, and muttered to himself every now and then—what, I could not understand. We must have been sitting there for ten minutes at least, when the two boys whom Willy had left to look for the ferret came dripping in, with the object of their search safely housed in a bag, and silently stationed themselves along with their brothers and sisters in the corner by the bed.
“Is the rain nearly over?” I asked the elder.
“I dunno, miss,” he replied, bashfully rubbing the sole of his foot up and down the shin of the other leg.
“I can tell you that,” said Willy, getting up and going to the door. “I don’t think it looks like clearing for another quarter of an hour.”