“Well, miss,” he said, “an’ this is the truth I’m tellin’ ye—‘t was not fit that he should be sailin’ in the boat wid you.”
Kate tossed her head impatiently.
“And how long are you my director in—in such matters as these, Murphy?” she asked, with irony.
The old man’s eyes glistened with the emotions which a sudden swift thought conjured up.
“How long?” he asked, with dramatic effect.
“Sure, the likes of me c’u’d be no directhor at all—but ’tis a dozen years since I swore to his honor, The O’Mahony himself, that I’d watch over ye, an’ protect ye, an’ keep ye from the lightest breath of harrum—an’ whin I meet him, whether it be the Lord’s will in this world or the nixt, I’ll go to him an’ I’ll take off me hat, an’ I’ll say: ‘Yer honor, what old Murphy putt his word to, that same he kep!’ An’ is it you, Miss Katie, that remimbers him that well, that ’u’d be blamin’ me for that same?”
“I don’t know if I’m so much blaming you, Murphy,” said Kate, much softened by both the matter and the manner of this appeal, “but ’tis different, wit’ this young man, himself an O’Mahony by name.”
“Faith, be the same token, ’tis manny thousands of O’Mahonys there are in foreign parts, I’m tould, an’ more thousands of ’em here at home, an’ if it’s for rowin’ ’em all on Dunmanus Bay ye’d be, on the score of their name, ’tis grand new boats we’d want.”
Kate smiled musingly.
“Did you mind, Murphy,” she asked, after a pause, “how like the sound of his speech was to The O’Mahony’s?”