“Well, Miss, ye see, she’s only just in off grass; sure she’ll rejoice greatly in the coorse of the next few days, and she’d fit the shafts well enough so.”
Thus spoke the proprietor of many flocks and herds to whom we had addressed ourselves. “It’s a pity there’s nothing would suit ye only the little thrap, but surely ye might thry her whatever.”
“She” was a farm mare of mountainous proportions, who after violent exertions had been squeezed between the shafts of the governess-cart, and she now stood gazing plaintively at us, and switching her flowing tail, while the shafts made grooves for themselves in her fat sides.
“Sit in now, Miss, and dhrive her out o’ the yard.” My second cousin got in with ease, the step of the trap being almost on the ground, owing to the unnatural elevation of its shafts, and the mare strode heavily forward. My cousin clutched the front rail convulsively.
“I am slipping out!” she said with a sudden tension in her voice. Had she thought of it she might have held on by the tail, which hung down like a massive bell-rope above her, but as it was, after a moment or two of painful indecision, she made a hurried but safe exit over the door of the trap. The fate of the expedition trembled in the balance, and the group of spectators who had formed round us began to look concerned. The mare was extracted with some difficulty from the pinioning shafts, and all things were as they were, the governess-cart with its shafts on the ground, and my cousin and I with our hearts in our boots, when a voice came to us from the crowd—
“Johnny Flaherty have a nice jinnet.”
“A betther never shtud in Galway!” said another voice. “She’s able to kill anny horse on the road.”
An excited discussion followed, in the course of which it was brought forward as the jennet’s strongest
