“They leathered her in the cabin and they coaxed her from outside, but it was all of no use. The craythur stood jammed in the door, while the childer crawled in and out of the cabin among her hind legs—the fore legs was half a cow’s length outside. That was the situation in the middle of the day, and all the neighbours was standing round giving advice, and calling in to the widdy herself—who, of course, was a prisoner in the cabin—not to lose heart.
“‘It’s not heart I’m afeard of losing—it’s the cow,’ says she.
“Well, your honours, the evening was coming on, but no change in the situation of affairs took place, and the people of the country-side was getting used to the appearance of the half cow projecting beyond the door of the cabin, and to think that maybe, after all, it was nothing outside the ordinary course of events, when Barney M’Bratney, who does the carpentering at the Castle, came up the road.
“He took in the situation with the glance of the perfessional man, and says he, ‘By the Powers, its a case of the cow or the cabin. Which would ye rather be after losing, Widdy?’
“‘The cabin by all means,’ says she.
“‘You’re right, my good woman,’ says he. ‘Come outside with you.’
“Well, your honours, the kindly neighbours hauled the widdy outside over the back of the cow, and then with a crowbar Barney attacked the walls on both sides of the door. In ten minutes the cow was free, but the cabin was a wreck.
“Of course his lardship built it up again stronger than it ever was, but as he wouldn’t make the door wide enough to accommodate the cow—he offered to build a byre for her, but that wasn’t the same—he has never been so respected as he was before in the neighbourhood of Ballyboreen.”
“That’s all very well as a story,” said Edmund; “but you see we were talking on the subject of the advantages of the higher education of woman.”
“True for you, sir,” said Brian. “And if the Widdy MacDermott had been born with eddication would she have let her childer to sleep with the cow?”