“Just you tell him from me,” said Priscilla, “that if I don’t get that rudder properly settled when I want it tomorrow morning, I’ll go out to Inishbawn, in spite of your rats and your heifers.”
Peter Walsh’s face remained perfectly impassive. Not even in his eyes was there the smallest expression of surprise or uneasiness.
“What would be the good of saying the like of that to him?” he said. “It’s laughing at me he’d be, for he wouldn’t understand what I’d mean.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Priscilla. “Whatever villainy there is going on between you and Joseph Antony Kinsella, Patsy the smith will be in it along with you.”
Peter Walsh helped Frank into the bath-chair. Priscilla, her face wearing a most determined expression, wheeled him away.
“That rudder will be ready all right,” she said.
“But what do you think is going on on the island?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know.”
“Could they be smuggling?”
“They might be smuggling, only I don’t see where they’d get anything to smuggle. Anyway, it’s no business of ours so long as we get the rudder. I don’t think it’s at all a good plan, Cousin Frank, to be always poking our noses into other people’s secrets, when we don’t absolutely have to.”