"Look! I has to cry when I thinks of it!"
It is impossible with Mrs. Twomey, and her like, to argue a point, or to attempt an appeal to reason. A flat and dictatorial contradiction may have some temporary effect, and Major Talbot-Lowry adopted this method, for lack of better, in defence of his nominee. Mrs. Twomey, however, continued to weep.
"But Mary," urged Frederica, "there isn't a doctor in the world who doesn't lose a patient sometimes. It may not have been this unfortunate young man's fault in the least——"
"'Tisn't that I'm crying for at all," sobbed Mrs. Twomey, a deplorable little figure, her head bent down, while she wiped violently and alternately her nose and her eyes in her sacking apron. "But it is what the people is sayin' on the roads about" (sob) "about" (sniff)——
"About what?' said Dick, who was being bored.
"About your Honour!" returned Mrs. Twomey, in a sort of roar.
"And what the devil are they saying about me?"
"God forbid that I'd put down any dirty stain before your Honour," sobbed Mrs. Twomey, recurring to her earlier metaphor; "it's that big horse that ye're afther buyin' from Docthor Mangan; they say that he gave him to ye too cheap on the head of it——"
"On the head of what, woman?" shouted Dick, now passing, by the well-worn channel of anxiety, from boredom to anger.
"On the head of the Dispinsary! Sure they says 'twas your Honour gave it to Danny Aherne!"