Hobbling on bent and breathless, wrapped in her rusty black shawl, with her shadow flitting far out over the level bog amid the slanted beams, she looked a not inappropriate messenger of woe, symbolically impotent and insignificant; a little dark speck in the wide westering light; a feeble stir of life creeping on the verge of a vast silent solitude; and full, withal, of baseless fears and futile plots, concerning the withered shred of existence that remained to her. She was just in the nick of time, she said to herself, when she saw the trio presently coming over the top of the hill. Ody was pointing out conciliatingly to the morose Rory how they'd be at home now nearly in the time he'd be waggin' his tail; and Hugh McInerney was resolving that he would go on straight to his own place, and defer the presentation of the ugly yellow ribbon until to-morrow. All three were hot and fagged and dusty.
"Well, lad, and what's the best good news wid you?" Ody's aunt said to him, as they met.
"Little enough," said Ody.
"And you comin' out of a fair?" she said. "Bedad now, we make a better offer at it ourselves up here for the matter of news."
"What's that at all?" said Ody.
"Sure amn't I just after hearin' tell of a grand weddin' there's goin' to be prisintly?" said his aunt, "and that doesn't happen every day of the year."
"Och, a weddin'," said Ody. "I was thinkin' maybe there was somethin' quare at our little place beyant yonder. But as long as it's nothin' worser than weddin's you're hearin' tell of, I'm contint, if you listened the two ears off your head."
"It's Denis O'Meara and Theresa Joyce has made a match of it," said his aunt, conscious that she was slightly overstating facts; "settled up it is on'y this evenin'. And the weddin's bound to be before his lave's out—so there's for you."
"Sure good luck to the both of thim," said Ody, "Theresa Joyce is a plisant little bein', I'll say that for her, and divil a bit of harm there is in O'Meara aither. A fine chap he is for a sodger; not that they're any great things as far as I can see—just pólis a thrifle smartened up."
Ody's thoughts were for the moment running on the police, a couple of whom he had lately espied at a short distance coming across the bog.