“On account of Priscilla?”
“Her and the young fellow she has with her. They’re out hunting them two that has Flanagan’s old boat the same as it might be some of the boys at a coursing match and the hare in front of them. Such chasing you never seen! It was up out of their beds they were this morning at six o’clock, when you’d think the likes of them would be asleep.”
“I seen them,” said Kinsella.
“And the one of them is as bad as the other. You’d be hard put to it to say whether it was Priscilla has put the comether on the young fellow or him that had her druv’ on to be doing what it would be better for her to leave alone.”
“Tell me this now, Peter Walsh, that young fellow is by the way of having a sore leg on him, so they tell me. Would you say now but that might be a trick the way it would put us off from suspecting any mischief he might be up to?”
“I was thinking myself,” said Peter, “that he might be imposing on us; but it’s my opinion now that the leg’s genuine. I followed them up last night, unbeknown to them, to see would he get out of the perambulator when he was clear of the town and nobody to notice him. But he kept in it and she wheeled him up to the big house every step of the way.”
The evidence was conclusive and carried complete conviction to Kinsella’s mind.
“What would be your own opinion,” said Peter Walsh, “about that one that does be going about the bay in your own boat along with Jimmy?”
“I wouldn’t say there’d be much harm in her. Jimmy says it’s hard to tell what she’d be after. He did think at the first go off that it might be cockles; but it’s not, for he took her to Carribee strand, where there’s plenty of them, and the devil a one she’d pick up. Nor it’s not periwinkles. Nor dilishk, though they do say that the dilishk is reckoned to be a cure for consumption, and you’d think it might be that. But Jimmy says it’s not, for he offered her a bit yesterday and she wouldn’t look at it.”
“I don’t know what else it could be,” said Peter Walsh.