Peter evaded this point, saying, "Well, anyway, those times, if there was just the two of them in it, and no harm to be doin', let alone any good people to know the differ, it's on'y a quare sort of Divil he'd get the chance of bein'. I wouldn't call him anythin' much."
"He wouldn't be so very long, you may depind," Johanna pronounced. "Musha, sure the Divil couldn't stay contint anywhile at all till he'd take to some manner of ould mischief 'ud soon show you the sort of crathur he was—it's his nathur. I should suppose the first thing he'd go do 'ud be makin' all the sorts of hijjis roarin' great bastes and snakes and riptiles that he could think of, and the disolit black wet bogs wid the could win' over them fit to cut you in two when you're sleepin' out at night," said Johanna, whose ten years of life had brought her into some rough places before her adoption by her Aunt Lizzie Ryan, "and the workhouses—bad luck to the whole of them—where there's rats in the cocoa, and mad people frightenin' you, and the cross matrons, and the pólis, and the say to dhrownd the fishin'-boats in, and dirty ould naygurs that put dacint people out of their little places——"
"If it had been me," said Peter, "I'd ha' been very apt to just hit him a crack on the head when I noticed what he was at, and bid him lave thim sort of consthructions alone."
"I dunno the rights of it entirely," Johanna admitted, "but it's a cruel pity he ever got the chance to be carryin' on the way he's done."
"Ah, sure it can't be helped now at all events," said Peter, who was for the time being not inclined to quarrel seriously with the scheme of things, as he basked on the warm grassy bank, where the wild bees were humming in the thyme, happily remote from the grim House and the hungry sea.
"Belike it can't," said Johanna; "but 'twould be real grand if it could. Suppose I was out on the hill there some fine evenin', and I not thinkin' of anythin' in partic'lar, and all of a suddint I'd see a great, big, ugly, black-lookin' baste of a feller, the size of forty, skytin' away wid himself along the light of the sky over yonder, where the sun was about goin' down, and his shadder the len'th of an awful tall tree slippin' streelin' after him, till it was off over the edge of the world like, and that same 'ud be just the Divil, that they were after bundlin' out of it body and bones, the way he wouldn't get meddlin' and makin' and annoyin' people any more. So wid that I'd take a race home and be tellin' you all the iligant thing was after happenin'. And in the middle of it who'd come landin' in but me father and mother, and little Dan. And then, if it isn't the grand cup of tay I'd be makin' her, ay begorra would I, and a sugarstick to stir it wid."
Johanna's vision of the millennium was broken in upon querulously by Thady. "Sure I know all about God Almighty and the Divil," he said comprehensively, "I was on'y axin' what was in it before the beginnin' of everythin', and you're not tellin' me that."
"There's a dale of things little spalpeens like you wouldn't be tould the rights of at all," said Peter, loftily, being rather annoyed at the interruption. He would have liked to hear some further details about the felicity to be inaugurated by that exquisite cup of tea. "Go on romancin', Han."
But Johanna, who felt that this assumption of superior knowledge was an uncandid subterfuge, and yet had not magnanimity enough to disclaim it on her own part, remained uneasily silent for a moment, and then only said: "Sure it's time we was gettin' home." This they accordingly proceeded to do, and had gone most of the distance before it occurred to anybody that little Terence O'Driscoll was not with them. Then, after a superficial and unproductive search among the scattered stones and bushes, they thought it expedient to run back in a fright, and report that the child had gone and got lost, unless by any odd chance he'd come home along wid himself.
Thus it was that when Terence wakened from his nap, he found himself deserted, and thrown completely upon his own resources. As he had not been quite three years in amassing these, they were on the whole but scanty. In fact, he was helplessly unable to realise a world with nothing in it except endlessly swelling up slopes of furzy grass, no Molly nor Micky for him to trot after, and to carry him wherever they were going, whenever he intimated the desirability of that step by abruptly plumping down on the way. So he set off in a great hurry to escape from such a wilderness. He still walked with a wobbling stagger, and his long frock of whity-brown homespun kept on tripping him up, which retarded his progress. But he was not at all long in mentally reaching the precincts of a wild panic which rose up and seized him in a grip never to be quite forgotten, though only a few desperate minutes ensued before he stumped blindly against Con's legs. It was so unutterable a relief to have come on somebody who could hear him roar, that Terence ceased roaring immediately, and let Con pick him up without demur. The appearance of Molly or Micky would, no doubt, have been more satisfactory, but this stranger man might serve well enough at a pinch to carry him home, which it was inconceivable that anybody of such a size could be unable or unwilling to do. As for Con, the inference he drew from Terence's dimensions was that his family and friends were probably not far to seek; and he recognised the shrewdness of the conjecture when he presently espied a shawled figure coming swiftly towards him over the edge of a slope, with the amber of the sunset glowing behind her, and her long shadow sliding on far below her, as if it were in an even greater hurry than herself.