Mrs. O'Driscoll's head was among the golden sunbeams, but her heart had gone down to the very bottom of the blackest and deepest hole in the bog. For towards that dreadful goal she had seen a small form toddling ever since the other children came home alarmingly late with the news that Terence had got lost on them, and they couldn't find a bit of him, high ways or low ways. She was so overjoyed at her rescue that her delighted gratitude cast a sort of glamour around Con, which never wholly faded away. Ever after the appearance of his queer figure called up in her mind a dim reminiscence of the moment when she had seen it for the first time come into view, laden with what she well knew was Terence sitting bolt upright in a manner that betokened him to have experienced neither drowning nor any other disaster.
As Con put the child into her arms, where it seemed to fit into a niche specially designed for it, he said: "Sure now, ma'am, when I seen him stumpin' along his lone, and he about the heighth of a sizable boholawn (ragweed), sez I to meself there was apt to be somebody lookin' after him. For bedad it seems to me mostwhiles the littler a thing is the more people there'll be consaitin' they can't get on widout it; and that's lucky, belike, or else it might aisy get lost entirely, like a threepenny bit rowled away into a crack. But if you come to considher," Con said, hurrying on lest his allusion to the coin should be construed as a hint that he thought of payment for his services, "most people's lookin' out for somebody, or else somebody's lookin' out for them. It's on'y a few odd ones like meself that makes no differ here or there. I won'er now is the raison that it's after losin' ourselves we are in a manner—I've I've me notions about that. For first I think I dunno if anythin's rightly lost that nobody's lookin' to find, and then I think I dunno but you might as well say you couldn't find anythin' you weren't after losin' and lookin' for, and that's not the truth be no manner of manes."
"And you after findin' the child," said Mrs. O'Driscoll.
"Sure not at all, ma'am," said Con, modestly, deprecating not the statement but the implied praise. "Small thanks to me for that, when the woful bawls of it you might have heard a mile o' ground. You could as aisy ha' missed a little clap of thunder, if a one was be chance comin' tatterin' along between the furzes, wid the head of it bobbin' up now and agin, and makin' all the noise it could conthrive. Troth it's the quare bawls I might be lettin' these times afore the rest of them 'ud hear me, for if it's lost I am, I'm strayin' a terrible long while; they're apt to disremimber they ever owned me. I do be thinkin', ma'am, that if you forgit what you've lost, 'tis maybe all the one thing as if you'd found it; and after that agin I do be thinkin' maybe 'twould be liker losin' it twyste over. It's quare the diff'rint notions there is about most things. And a good job too, or else what would you be considherin' in your mind, when you was thrampin' around? 'Deed now if you couldn't be supposin' they were this way and that way, and argufyin' over them wid yourself in your own mind, 'twould be like as if you took and swallied down a lump of 'baccy instead of chewin' it, and what sort of benefit or plisure 'ud you git out of that?"
This was Con's first bit of philosophising at Lisconnel, and it was not his last by many, as the place became one of his favourite resorts. His liking for it was perhaps partly due to the fact that its inhabitants received him on more equal terms than were generally accorded to him elsewhere; and this again may be largely attributed to the influence of Mrs. O'Driscoll. For her grateful feelings towards the restorer of Terence made her loth to recognise any deficiencies in him, and her neighbours, soon perceiving that she seemed vexed if Con was spoken of as cracked or crazy or "wantin' a corner," were ready enough to modify their language, and even their judgment, in accordance with her view. Still it was convenient to distinguish him from another resident Con, about whom there were no very striking features. Therefore her little Rose having been heard to say that she was "after seein' Con, not Con Ryan, but the quare one," they caught up and applied the epithet, which in Lisconnel is regarded as a safely colourless term, not likely to hurt the most sensitive feelings.
Con, on his part, formed the highest opinion of Mrs. O'Driscoll, and often took counsel with her about perplexing points which had presented themselves to him in the course of his meditations. In one practical matter, however, he showed an obstinacy that did not further her in her wish to uphold him on a footing with quite sensible people. This was his fancy for adorning the band of his broad-brimmed caubeen with a garnish of feathers and flowers. Mrs. O'Driscoll disapproved of the freak, rightly judging that it often created irrevocable first impressions, and fixed his standing at a glance. In this age and clime the Seven Sages could hardly maintain among them a reverend aspect, under the frivolity of a single flaunting blossom, much less the gaudy bunches and fantastic plumes upon which Con recklessly ventured. So at last, having hinted and remonstrated ineffectually, she contrived somehow to find time and stuff among her laborious days and scanty stores, and fashioned for him a round cloth cap of a severely plain design, which she thought would give no scope for any unseemly appendages. Upon being presented with this headgear, Con dutifully assumed it, and went about wearing it for a day or two in a depressed frame of mind. Then he appeared in the morning at the O'Driscolls', cheered, and crested with a remarkably long gannet's feather stuck upright in the crown of his cap, through which he had bored a hole to admit of the insertion. He was resolved to brazen out the matter, so he presently took off his cap, and twirling it round with an unconcerned air as he leaned against the door, said to Herself: "Well, ma'am, what do you think of that?"
"To tell you just the truth, Con," said Herself, whose countenance had fallen as she saw the failure of her little plot, "I was thinkin' it looked a dale better before you cocked that ould gazabo on top of it. 'Deed now it gives you the apparance of a head of cabbage that's sproutin' up and goin' to seed. Sure you niver see the other lads trapesin' about wid the like on them."
Con, who seemed rather cast down by this criticism, was about to reply, when young Ned Keogh took the cap out of his hand and affected to examine it closely, saying: "Glory be to goodness, what sort of thing is it at all at all? Bedad it's the won'erful conthrivance—ah, tub-be sure; I see what it is. He's about growin' a pair of wings for his wit to fly away wid. But musha good gracious, he needn't ha' throubled himself to be gettin' them that sizable. Somethin' the bigness of a hedge-sparrer's, or maybe a weeny white butterfly's, 'ud ha' plinty stren'th enough for the job, if that was all they had to do." Ned meant no harm, but his witticisms did not fall in with Con's humour, so he snatched back the cap and went off affronted, nor did he call at the O'Driscolls' again for some weeks.
The next time he came, however, Herself had espied him a bit down the road, and was standing at the door to receive him with his discarded caubeen in her hand. "You'd be better wearin' it, Con, after all," she said, "for the eyes are scorched out of your head under the sun widout e'er a scrap of brim." And as Con took it, he observed with glee that she had fastened into the band a dove-coloured kittiwake's wing-feather, a somewhat cherished possession of her own, which she used to keep over her best picture on the wall. Thus did she seek to make amends for the speech about the sprouting cabbage-head, which had been weighing heavily upon her conscience.
The kittiwake's feather had to weather rain and sunshine for many a year in Con the Quare One's old caubeen; but it is now on a room-wall again, the Kilfoyles' this time. Con brought it to Mrs. Kilfoyle one autumn evening in the year Mrs. O'Driscoll died. It was much longer than usual since he had wandered into Lisconnel, illness and one thing and another having detained him in the North for the last twelvemonth and more—all her blackest days of childless widowhood—so that this was his first visit since the departure of his earliest friend.