“More power, Masther Willy!”
“Tighten yourself now, Mrs. Sweeny!”
“Ah ha! d’ye mind that for a lep! He’s the divil’s own dancer!”
I looked on and listened to it all from the gateway, feeling, in spite of my Sarsfield blood, a stranger in a strange land. I did not recognize many of the people about me; beyond some of the junior members of the Durrus household, who nodded to me with the chastened, reserved friendliness of the domestic servant when away from her own roof, and Mary Minnehane, whose white teeth shone in a broad grin when I looked at her, I knew no one. Neither Anstey nor her mother were anywhere to be seen, though I had looked up and down the row of faces several times for them. A small, ugly old man, whom I knew to be Michael Brian, the lodge-keeper, was in charge of the barrel of porter. I noticed during the dance that, although he never took his eyes off the dancers, he did not applaud, and before it was over he left the barrel in the care of a subordinate, and went past me into the lodge.
In a minute or two he returned, bringing Anstey with him, and she began to help him in dispensing the porter. The niche in which it was placed was quite near to where I was standing, and I could hear him scolding her in a low voice. She looked frightened and unhappy, and Willy’s half-confession on the way down made me watch her with a peculiar, pitying interest. When the jig had ended with a long squeal from the pipes, intended, I presumed, to represent the fox’s death-agony, Willy led his breathless partner back to her place, and slowly made his way to me, amid a shower of compliments and pious ejaculations.
“Phew I’m mostly dead!” he said, leaning against the gatepost beside me, and fanning himself with his cap. “Mrs. Sweeny has more going in her than ten men, and dancing on the gravel is no joke.”
While he was speaking, I saw that his eye had fallen on Anstey, and almost imperceptibly he faced more and more in my direction, till his back was turned to her and her father. Another dance began, but, instead of joining in it, he lighted a cigarette and went on talking to me.
“Perhaps we’d better be getting home,” he said presently. “You must have seen about enough of it.”
We moved from where we were standing into the carriage-drive, and he said a general good night to the assemblage. The jig was stopped, and one of the dancers shouted—
“Three cheers for Masther Willy!”