“I suppose Mrs. Sarsfield liked to choose her servants for herself.”
The woman gave a derisive snort. “It ’ud be a quare thing if she’d choose her whatever!” she said. “Annyway, she never came next or nigh the house till after Mrs. Dominick dyin’, and thin she was took back to mind the owld masther and Masther Willy.”
“But I thought she was weak in her head?”
“Och! the divil a fear! She was as cute as a pet fox till the winther the owld masther died; but whativer came agin her thin I don’t rightly know. ’Twas about the time she marri’d owld Michael Brian it began with her. She looked cliver enough; but the spaych mostly wint from her, and she was a year that way.” Here she looked behind her, and crossed herself with a start. “The saints be about us!” she exclaimed, in a whisper; “look at herself follying us!”
I also turned, and saw Moll Hourihane close behind. She was walking on the strip of grass by the side of the road, and, without looking at us, she passed by, moving with a sliding shuffle, which I can only compare to the rolling action of an elephant. She shambled along in front of us until she came near the gate in the Durrus avenue, when, turning aside into the bog, she made her way across it to a large black pit filled with water, apparently one of the many deep holes from which turf had once been dug. Having wandered once or twice round its shelving, ragged edges—perilously near them, it seemed to me—she knelt down at its verge, and, folding her hands on her breast, as she had done on the first night I had seen her, she remained there without moving.
“Look at her now,” said my companion, superstitiously, “saying her prayers there down by Poul-na-coppal, as if ’twas before the althar she was. Faith, whin she had her sinses she wasn’t so great at her prayers!”
“I don’t think it is very safe to let her go to a place like that,” I said. “I suppose that hole is deep enough to drown her.”
“Is it Poul-na-coppal? Shure, it’s the greatest shwallow-hole in the country! Shure, wasn’t it there a fine young horse fell down in it wan time, and they niver seen the sight of him agin? There’s no bottom in it, only mud. Throth, if she got in there, she’d be bound to stay there; and ’twould be a good job too—God forgive me for sayin’ such a thing!”
“Don’t you think we ought to try and get her away from there?” I said, still watching Moll with a kind of fascination, as she rocked herself to and fro close to the edge.
“Wisha, thin, I’d be in dhread to near her at all. Shure, there’s times when she wouldn’t be said nor led by her own daughther.”