The woman on the floor at my feet rolled up at me a glance of compassionate amusement at this rustic ignorance, and tactfully changed the conversation by supposing that it was at Coffey's I got the salmon.
I said it was.
There was a silence, during which it was obvious that one question burnt in every heart.
"I'll go bail she axed him tinpence!" said the woman under the flap, as one who touches the limits of absurdity.
"It's a beautiful fish!" I said defiantly. "Eight pounds weight. I gave her ten shillings for it."
What is described in newspapers as "sensation in court" greeted this confession.
"Look!" said the woman under the flap, darting her head out of the hood of her cloak, like a tortoise, "'tis what it is, ye haven't as much roguery in your heart as'd make ye a match for her!"
"Divil blow the ha'penny Eliza Coffey paid for that fish!" burst out the fat woman in the corner. "Thim lads o' her's had a creel full o' thim snatched this morning before it was making day!"
"How would the gentleman be a match for her!" shouted the woman on the floor through a long-drawn whistle that told of a coming station. "Sure a Turk itself wouldn't be a match for her! That one has a tongue that'd clip a hedge!"
At the station they clambered out laboriously, and with groaning. I handed down to them their monster baskets, laden, apparently, with ingots of lead; they told me in return that I was a fine grauver man, and it was a pity there weren't more like me; they wished, finally, that my journey might well thrive with me, and passed from my ken, bequeathing to me, after the agreeable manner of their kind, a certain comfortable mental sleekness that reason cannot immediately dispel. They also left me in possession of the fact that I was about to present the irreproachable Alice Hervey with a contraband salmon.