“Well, sir,” said Bernard, dandling the infant tenderly as he spoke, “I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to be able, when I go back, to tell my father how I’d seen the O’Mahony castles here, and all that, right on the family’s old stamping-ground.”
“Yer father died, ye say, manny years ago?” remarked O’Daly.
“Sure, ‘manny’s not the word for it,” put in Mrs. O’Daly, with a flattering smile. “He’s but a lad yet, for all he’s seen and done.”
“Nobody could grow old in such an air as this,” said the young man, briskly. “You, yourself, bear witness to that, Mrs. O’Daly. Yes, my father died when I was a youngster. We moved out West after the War—I was a little shaver then—and he didn’t live long after that.”
“And would he be in the moines, too?” asked Cormac.
“No; in the leather business,” answered Bernard, without hesitation. “To the end of his days, he was always counting on coming back here to Ireland and seeing the home of the O’Mahonys again. To hear him talk, you’d have thought there wasn’t another family in Ireland worth mentioning.”
“’T was always that way wid thim O’Mahonys,” said O’Daly, throwing a significant glance over his wife and step-daughter. “I can spake freely to you, sir; for I’ll be bound ye favor yer mother’s side and ye were not brought up among them; but bechune ourselves, there’s a dale o’ nonsinse talked about thim same O’Mahonys. Did you ever hear yer father mintion an O’Daly?”
“Well—no—I can’t say I did,” answered the young man, bending his mind to comprehension of what the old man might be driving at.
“There ye have it!” said Cormac, bringing his hand down with emphasis on the table. “Sir, ’t is a hard thing to say, but the ingrathitude of thim O’Mahonys just passes belafe. Sure, ’t was we that made thim. What were they but poyrutts and robbers of the earth, wid no since but for raids an’ incursions, an’ burnin’ down abbeys an’ holy houses, and makin’ war on their neighbors. An’ sure, ’t was we civilized ’em, we O’Dalys, that they trate now as not fit to lace up their shoes. ’T was we taught thim O’Mahonys to rade an’ write, an’ everything else they knew in learnin’ and politeness. An’ so far as that last-mintioned commodity goes”—this with a still more meaning, sidelong glance toward the women—“faith, a dale of our labor was wasted intoirely.”
Even if Kate would have taken up the challenge, the young man gave her no time.