‘Well now, well now, is this yourselves? Bless me, ladies, but ’tis the proud man I am to see you in my poor house,’ he exclaimed as he entered. ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am! and how is that good man your husband? and your fine girl, too? But it is a sight to see her coming up the road, so it is!’
‘Och! Pete Durane, get along then, with your fine speeches,’ said his wife irritably. ‘What a murrain brings you back at this time of day? Is it to torment me before you need you’re wanting?’
‘Arrah, don’t be speaking to him like that, Rosha Durane!’ said the aunt from the other side of the island, with a short derisive laugh. ‘I tell you, Pete, there has been a very fine girl asking for you yourself, this day, so there has. Och, but a fine girl, as fine as any in Inishmaan. Saints alive! but ’twas herself was disappointed not to find you within. “Will he come to see me this evening, do you think, Mrs. Durane?” says she, putting her head on one side. “’Tis the unfortunate colleen I am to miss him,” says she. So you may be the proud man, Pete Durane, then you may!’
Poor Pete’s face got as red as his wife’s petticoat. His susceptibility was one of the many standing jokes upon Inishmaan, where jokes were rare, and once started lasted long. It was quite true. By one of those humorous freaks of which nature is fond, while his handsome stalwart contemporaries were all but invulnerable in this respect, the poor little pittiogue was known to be intensely susceptible to the tender passion. It had made him a slave all his life to his wife Rosha, and even now, after years of consistent ill-usage on her part, he was still slavishly devoted to her, and took her buffets, physical no less than verbal, with all the meekness of an attached and well-broken-in house-dog.
‘Ugh! ugh! ’tis going I must be,’ old Peggy Dowd said suddenly, struggling to rise from her low seat. ‘Will you put the cloak around me, Mrs. Durane, ma’am, if you please. Ugh! ugh! ’Tis myself is scarce fit to walk back alone, so I am not.’
‘Will I send the girl Juggy Kelly with you to help you up the hill? Yes, indeed, but it is a great help, so it is. You must make her go behind you and push—push hard. Trouble? Och! what are the young people for if not to be of some good to those that’s better and older than themselves? But where is she, that girl Juggy Kelly? It is always out of the way she is when she is wanted. Run, Pete, run out down the road and look for her. Quick, man, don’t be standing there like a stuck pig over against the door, taking up all the light.’
Then, as the obedient Pete flew off hatless down the path—‘It is not known the trouble I have had with that girl!’ Mrs. Durane continued, turning for sympathy to her friends. ‘Would you believe it, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am, ’tis sleeping with the chickens now she complains of! There is not a morning of her life but she comes to me with her face all scratched, crying and saying she’ll not stop in it. “Then don’t,” says I; “go sleep with the crows if you like, since the chickens won’t serve you.” That is what I say; yes, indeed! such impudence!’
‘Och! there is no satisfying the young people, do what you will for them these times,’ Mrs. O’Flanagan replied sympathetically. ‘Did you hear of young Macdara Kilbride—Manus Kilbride’s eldest son, him that’s just back from America?—it is not into his own father and mother’s house he will go almost, so it is not. “Phew! phew!” says he; “why, what a lot of smoke!” And so there is some smoke, and why would there not be? It is a very good house, Mary Kilbride’s house is, there is no better house in all Inishmaan. It is true it is built on a bit of a slope, and the door is at the top, so that the rain comes into it in wet weather; God He sends the rain, and it is a very bad season for Inishmaan when He does not send enough—oh yes, a very bad season, everyone knows that. But Macdara Kilbride is just so. His feet do be sticking in the floor of the house, he says, every time he crosses it. It is a soft floor, there is no denying that, and the chimney never was a good one to draw, being fallen in a good deal at the top, and the stones off. But, Man Above! does he think his father can be going into Galway every day in the week for more bricks? Besides, it is a good house; a very good house is Mary Kilbride’s.’
‘Ugh! ugh! what did I tell you just now? ’Tis the same everywhere. Young people they are the same, all the same; there is no good in them at all, so there is not!’ Peggy Dowd again spat vigorously into the fire to emphasise her disgust, then hitched her big cloak about her shoulders, and began preparing with many groans and wheezing sighs to depart without the aid of her proffered assistant.
Just as she had hobbled across to the doorway it was again filled by a figure, and the elder Durane, Pete’s father, came in.