“You call that criticism. Patsy?”
“Whichever way you look at it, hasn’t it an ugly face? Is it a kindness to man to bring him into the wurruld? That’s wan way of lookin’ at it. But suppose he meant the other thing, that not being married, you—”
“Patsy Kernaghan,” interjected the Young Doctor sternly, “you’re not fit company. Take care, or there’ll be no Slow Down Ranch for you. An evil mind——”
Now it was Patsy’s turn to interrupt: “Watch me now, I think that wan of the most beautiful things I iver saw was them two young people comin’ together. Five long months it was, afther Mazarine was put away before she spoke with him. It was in the gardin at Nolan’s ranch, and even then it wasn’t aisy till her. Not that she didn’t want to see him all the time; not, I’ll be bound, that she didn’t say, when you and Nolan first told her the mastodon was dead, ‘Thank God, I’m free!’ But, there he was, flung out of the wurruld without a minute’s notice, and with the black thing in his heart. Shure you’ll be understandin’ it a thousand times better than meself, y’r anner.”
He took a pinch of snuff from a little box, offered it to the Young Doctor and continued his story.
“Well, as I said, whin five months had gone by they met. By chanct I saw the meetin’. Watch me now, I’ll tell you how it was. She was sittin’ on a bench in the gardin, lookin’ in front of her and seein’ nothin’ but what was in her mind’s eye, and who can tell what she would be seein’! There she sat sweet as a saint, very straight up, the palms of her hands laid on the bench on either side, as though they was supporfin’ her—like a statue she looked. I watched her manny a minute, but she niver moved. Well, there she was, lookin’—lookin’ in front o’ her, whin round the big tree in the middle of the gardin he come and stood forninst her. They just looked and looked at each other without a word. Like months it seemed. They looked, and looked, as though they was tryin’ to read some story in each other’s eyes, and then she give a kind of joyful moan, and intil his arms she went like a nestlin’ bird.
“He raised up her head, and-well, now, y’r anner, I niver saw anything I liked better. There niver had been a girl in his life, and there niver was a man in hers—not one that mattered, till they two took up with each other, and it’s a thing—well, y’r anner, I’d be a proud man if I could write it down. It’s a story that’d take its place beside the ancient ones.”
The Young Doctor looked at Patsy meditatively. “Patsy,” said he, “the difference between the north and the south of Ireland is that in the south they are all poets—” He paused.
“Well, you haven’t finished, y ‘r anner,” said Kernaghan.
“And in the north they think they are,” continued the Young Doctor. “I’d like to see those two as your eyes in front of your mind saw them, Patsy.”