Connor suddenly caught Coolin’s arm. “D’ye say that!” said he. “Shure, I’ll tell ye now why the chills rin down me back whin I hear uv y’r drame. Thrue things are drames, as I’ll prove to ye—as quare as condinsation an’ as thrue, Coolin; fer condinsation comes out uv nothin’, and so do drames.... There was Mary Haggarty, Coolin—ye’ll not be knowin’ Mary Haggarty. It was mornin’ an’ evenin’ an’ the first day uv the world where she were. That was Mary Haggarty. An’ ivery shtep she tuk had the spring uv the first sod of Adin. Shure no, ye didn’t know Mary Haggarty, an’ ye niver will, Coolin, fer the sod she trod she’s lyin’ under, an’ she’ll niver rise up no more.”
“Fer choice I’ll take the sod uv Erin to the sand uv the Soudan,” said Coolin.
“Ye’ll take what ye can get, Coolin; fer wid a splinterin’ bullet in y’r gizzard ye lie where ye fall.”
“But Mary Haggarty, Connor?”
“I was drinkin’ hard, ye understand, Coolin—drinkin’, loike a dhromedairy—ivery day enough to last a wake, an’ Mary tryin’ to stop me betimes. At last I tuk the pledge—an’ her on promise. An’ purty, purty she looked thin, an’ shtepping light an’ fine, an’ the weddin’ was coming an. But wan day there was a foire, an’ the police coort was burned down, an’ the gaol was that singed they let the b’ys out, an’ we rushed the police an’ carried off the b’ys, an’—”
“An’ ye sweltered in the juice!” broke in Coolin with flashing eyes, proud to have roused Connor to this secret tale, which he would tell to the Berkshires as long as they would listen, that it should go down through a long line of Berkshires, as Coolin’s tale of William Connor.
“An’ I sweltered in the swill,” said Connor, his eye with a cast quite shut with emotion, and the other nearly so. “An’ wance broke out agin afther tin months’ goin’ wake and watery, was like a steer in the corn. There was no shtoppin’ me, an’—”
“Not Mary Haggarty aither?”
“Not Mary Haggarty aither.”
“O, William Connor dear!”