“WE VIEWED THE STOWING OF THE GOVERNESS-CART.”
these in the governess cart, and then went to Mr. Flaherty for his final sailing orders.
“Ye’ll mind her passing Flanigan’s; she have a fashion of running in there; and as for passing our own place, I have a boy standin’ there now in the archway with a stick, the way he’d turn her back out of it if she’d make a dart for the stable, and I’ll put a rope in the thrap for fear anything might break on ye.”
Mr. Flaherty looked a little anxious as he gave us these directions, and when he had gone for the rope, an old woman, who had been regarding us with a sympathetic solicitude, came up to my cousin and took her by the arm.
“That the Lord may save yees! that’s all I’ll say,” she groaned; “if ’twas a horse itself, I’d say nothin’, but thim mules is nayther here nor there. Sure asthore, ye couldn’t tell the minnit he’d turn into a boghole, when he doesn’t know ye, and thim Cunnemarra roads has nothin’ before him to shtop him only the grace of God! and the wather up aich side of the road by yees as deep as a well!”
It was painful to find that Oughterard credited the jennet with the sole conduct of the expedition, and regarded us as helpless dependents on her will and pleasure. But the old woman’s agitation was quite unaffected, and the last thing we heard, as we flourished down the main street, was her voice uplifted in prayerful lamentation.
Owing possibly to the fact that Mr. Flaherty’s boy was demonstrating with the pitch-fork in the archway leading to the stable, Sibbie made no attempt to “dart” into it as her owner had anticipated, and nothing marred the dignity of our departure. We turned cautiously over the crooked bridge, and drove along beside the river, running black under tall trees, with patches of foam sailing fast on it. Villas with trimly clipped ivy and flower-beds all ablaze were on our other hand, suburban in self-respecting neatness, romantic by force of surroundings and of something old-fashioned and solid in their build.