When they disembarked her, gasping and dripping, at the nearest landing-place, she was understood to say, "Sure me heart's broke," a remark which Police-sergeant Young, who formed one of the group gathered by the disaster, considered sufficient grounds for marching her off to the handiest J. P. on a charge of attempted suicide. Mrs. M'Bean vehemently repelled the accusation. She explained that she had said her heart was broke only "because she had lost her ould hat, and every thread of a rag on her had been dhrenched and ruinated with the salt water. How could she go for to do such a sin as destroy herself, she urged, and she wid a houseful of little childer waitin' for her at home, the crathurs?" Her arguments proved convincing, and the charge was summarily dismissed, not without strictures upon Sergeant Young's excessive zeal, by which he, recking nothing of Talleyrand's maxim, felt himself puzzled and aggrieved.
The incident, however, brought some more agreeable consequences to Mrs. M'Bean, as the J. P.'s ladies, commiserating her half-drowned plight, sent her that same evening a goodly bundle of cast-off clothes, over which her eyes grew gleefully bright in her careworn face. At one of the articles included they widened with almost awe. This was an enormous hat made of white fluffy felt, with vast contorted brims, and great blue velvet rosettes and streamers. Its fabric was very stout and substantial, and withal quite new, for its original owner had speedily found it so stiff and heavy that to wear it gave her a headache and a crick in her neck. Mrs. M'Bean, for her part, could not entertain the idea of carrying anything so sumptuous upon her grizzled head; and when she tried it on her eldest daughter, it totally extinguished and nearly smothered the child. So she stowed it away in a corner, where it remained unseen for several weeks.
But next month, on the afternoon of Easter Day, Mrs. M'Bean had two visitors over from Ballyhoy: Annie Cassidy, elderly and rather grim, with her young friend Nelly Walsh.
"Nelly's bound to be havin' bad luck this year of her life," Annie observed in the course of conversation, "for not a new stitch has she put on her to-day, and it Easter. That's an unlucky thing, accordin' to the sayin'."
"Ne'er a bit am I afraid of me luck," averred Nelly, cheerful and threadbare, not to say ragged. But Mrs. M'Bean was pricked by a sudden thought up the ladder to the little attic aloft, whence she creaked down again, bringing with her the great white hat. "There, Nelly," she said, "just clap that on your head, and then nobody can pass the remark that you didn't get the wear of somethin' new, any way."
Nelly took the hat, which struck her nearly dumb with admiration, but as she tried to catch a glimpse of it in the shred of looking-glass on the wall, her delighted expression waxed so eloquent that Mrs. M'Bean was impelled to say: "You're to keep it, girl alive, if you've e'er a fancy for it. Sure it's fitter for you than the likes of me, that 'ud look a quare old scarecrow if I offered to go about in such a thing." She had not at first intended this generosity, her worldly goods being so few that she could not lightly part with even a very unpromising possession.
Nelly, on her side, could hardly believe in her high fortune, when, after some polite demur, she found herself carrying off the splendid hat. To wear it on an ordinary walk would have seemed profane, so she held it under her old shawl all the way home to her cabin on the shore at the foot of the Black Banks, a good step beyond Ballyhoy. But when she reached the door, she could not forbear the pleasure of making her entrance in the glory of her new adornment. Her reception was altogether disappointing. For her mother's and grandmother's voices rose up shrill and shriller, demanding what at all hijjis gazabo she'd got on her. Billy, her eldest brother, said: "Musha, she's put a pair of blinkers on her like an ould horse;" and Larry, his junior, remarked with terse candour, "Och, the fright." More mortifying still, Joe Tierney, her sweetheart, who had called to conclude arrangements about the morrow's holiday, said in a disgusted tone: "Tare and ages! I hope to goodness, Nelly, you're not intindin' to make that show of yourself at the circus to-morra. Bedad, I niver seen such a conthrivance; you might as well be walkin' alongside some sort of deminted musharoon." This rather aptly described the effect of the huge white brim upon Nelly, who was small and short of stature; but it hurt her feelings badly.
The only upholder of the hat was Annie Cassidy, who is fond of controverting the opinions of other people, and who despises men. She said: "Don't be lettin' them put you out of consait with it, Nelly; it suits you lovely. Sure if anyone doesn't think your app'arance is good enough for them, you needn't throuble them wid your company. Circuses, to my mind, is thrash—to be watchin' folks figurandyin' on a pack of ould horses' backs. There's a lot of us goin' over to-morra to Rathbeg, where they've merry-go-rounds you can ride in yourself, and all manner, if you'd just step down to the Junction station and come along wid us on the early train."
"'Deed then I might," said Nelly; not that she had the least intention of doing any such thing, but because, being somewhat of a belle, she was unaccustomed to uncomplimentary criticisms and much affronted by them. Furthermore, for the same reason, she escorted Annie home, and stayed so long talking, that Joe before she returned had to go off about his milking, which annoyed him a good deal.
However, he had quite forgotten his vexation next morning, as he hurried through his early tasks with a day's pleasuring before him. He worked at the Kellys', whose land is bounded north and south by the Junction lane and the sea; and as he walked about the fresh April fields he was in view of Howth, dark pansy-purple against the eastern amber, confronting the sweep of the Dublin mountains, outlined in wild hyacinth-coloured mist, across the dancing silver of the bay. The calves had been fed so expeditiously that Joe found he could spare time to stop at the starred bank under the hedge and pick a bunch of primroses, some of which Nelly's mother would proudly keep in a jam-pot on the window-stool, while Nelly herself might like to wear a few at the circus, brightening up her brown-striped shawl.