"Could you be keepin' it somewheres safe for me, ma'am?" he said, showing the soft grey feather to Mrs. Kilfoyle, who was sitting by the fire with her sons and her future daughter-in-law, and Ody Rafferty's aunt, and the Widow M'Gurk. "I'll be wearin' it no more. 'Twas she herself stuck it in for me, but sure I knew well enough all the while she'd liefer I wouldn't be goin' about wid such things on me head, and sorra a bit of me will agin."
"Whethen now but yourself's the quare man, Con," said Ody Rafferty's aunt, "to be takin' up wid that notion these times, when ne'er a differ it'ill make to her. There might ha' been some sinse in it, if you'd done it to plase her, but now you're more than a trifle too late wid that. A day after the fair you are. Sure she'll never set eyes on you or your old caubeen agin," she said, as if announcing some unthought-of discovery of her own, "no matter what ould thrash you might take and stick in it. You might be wearin' a young haystack on your head for anythin' she could tell."
"That may be or mayn't be," said Con. "But at all evints the next body that goes there out of this countryside 'ill be very apt to bring her word. Discoorsin' together they'll be of all the news, and as like as not he—or it might be she—'ill say to her—'I seen Con the Quare One goin' the road a while back, and he wid ne'er a thraneen of anythin' in his hat, good or bad; the same way the other boys are; lookin' rael dacint and sinsible.' Belike she might be axin' after me herself, and that 'ud put it in the other body's head. Yourself it may be, Moggy. Faix now, I wouldn't won'er a bit if it was, for there must be a terrible great age on you these times. Sure you looked to be an ould, ould woman the first day I ever beheld you, and that's better than a dozen year ago."
"Troth then there's plinty of oulder ould people than me, let me tell you," protested Moggy, who was about ninety, "that you need be settlin' I'm goin' anywheres next. Musha cock you up. And your own hair turned as white as sheep's wool on a blackthorn bush."
She seemed so much put out by Con's statement and inference that young Thady Kilfoyle, always a good-natured lad, sought to soothe her.
"Sure there's no settlin' any such a thing, and for the matter of goin', the young people often enough get their turn as fast as anybody else. It's meself," he said, "might be sooner than you bringin' news of yous all, and Con's ould caubeen, and everythin' else to Heaven the way he sez."
"I dunno if you've any call to be talkin' that fashion," said the Widdy M'Gurk, disapprovingly, "as if you could be walkin' permisc-yis into Heaven widout wid your lave or by your lave. Maybe it isn't there any of us'ill be bringin' our news."
"Might you know of e'er a better place then, ma'am?" said Con.
"Heard you ever the like of that?" said Ody Rafferty's aunt, not unwillingly scandalised, "I should suppose nobody, unless it was a born haythen, 'ud know of any place better than Heaven."
"That's where she is then," said Con, stroking his feather. "For the best place ever was is none too good for her, God knows well."