“I mind Bee did better with her little pig than Patrick did with his big heifer,” Kathleen replied with a laugh.
“Why?” asked Mary Ellen.
“Hasn’t Patrick been trying to sell his heifer to Tim Keefe ever since we came to Tonroe?” Kathleen answered. “Faith, he only finished the bargain last Saturday; and it was Uncle Barney that brought it about then, else they’d still be a-higgling.”
“What’s this you are saying?” asked Patrick, who was selecting another sheep to shear.
“We’re saying that Bee makes a better bargain than you,” Kathleen told him.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“She got half as much for her pig as you did for the heifer, and the heifer was costing her feed all the four weeks you were making the bargain.”
Patrick threw back his head with a great laugh. “Here’s the child for you,” he called to Uncle Barney. “She says I was feeding the heifer for Tim Keefe for four weeks and getting nothing for it.”
“Tim Keefe is a young spalpeen,” said Uncle Barney. “I’d give a pound myself to see somebody get the better of him. It is what nobody ever did yet,” and he smiled down into Kathleen’s gray eyes.
He forgot his words the next minute, but Kathleen remembered them, even after the sheep-shearing was over and the turf-cutting had begun in the bog.