But when he was compressing a thick sheaf of the cool soft stalks in one hard hand, he chanced to look up, and saw what thrilled him with dismay. Bobbing along over the jagged edge of the wall, a short way down the lane went a gleaming white object, which he at once recognised as Nelly's new hat. He ran aghast to look through the gate, and despite intercepting road-curves and obstructive hedges, the hat it unmistakably was, making for the Junction station. So Nelly, intending a serious quarrel, had thrown him over and joined the Rathbeg party. A pleasure, hoarded in anticipation for many a month, shrivelled into dead leaves suddenly like fairy gold, as he perceived how certainly this must be the case.
His first angry impulse was a resort to Haskin's Public at Portbrendan, where he might spend his spoilt holiday taking drinks and making bets in the society of some cronies. What hindered him from immediately acting upon it was a compunctious forecast of the concern which would prevail in his family, if he absented himself contrary to expectation. "There's me mother's never aisy," he reflected, "unless she's persuadin' herself some of us are kilt on her." This made him resolve to postpone Portbrendan till after breakfast, and he turned lothfully homewards. As he passed along the Kellys' yard-wall, he relieved his feelings by tossing his nosegay over it at the place where he heard the grunting of their pigs, who on that occasion fared almost as delicately as Marvel's rose-lined fawn.
It was early still when he reached his cabin, one in the Walshes' row; and he sat down listlessly on a bank, to wait for nothing in particular. Presently Mrs. Walsh, senior, came by with a twinkling can of water. "Och, there you are, Joe," she said: "Nelly's been lookin' out for you this good while."
"Whethen it's quare lookin' out she had," said Joe, "and she took off wid herself to ould Annie Cassidy—bad manners to her for her interfarin'."
"What's the lad talkin' about at all?" said Mrs. Walsh, standing amazed; "Nelly's widin there this instiant of time, readyin' herself up."
"Maybe you'll tell me," said Joe, "that I didn't see her streelin' down the Junction lane afore I was lavin' Kellys'."
"And maybe you'll tell me," said Nelly's grandmother, "that she wasn't just now callin' to me they were wantin' wather. It's a fine bawl she'd ha' had to let out of her, if I was to be hearin' her, and she up beyond Kellys'."
"There she was anyway," Joe said, doggedly. "Wouldn't I know that dad fetched-lookin' ould new caubeen she's stuck on her a mile o' ground?"
"You great gomeral," said Mrs. Walsh. "If that's all you might aisy enough ha' seen the big hat goin' the road—but have you the notion it's growin' on Nelly's head? Why, you omadhawn, you hadn't quit ten minyits last night, and Nelly was just after gettin' back, when who should come by but poor Mad Bell. Och now the raggedy objick the crathur was, wid nothin' over her misfort'nit head but an ould wisp as full of houles as a fishin'-net. So little Larry sez, jokin' like, 'Look here, Nelly,' sez he, 'you'd a right to be lettin' Mad Bell have a loan of your grand nappy hat to keep the sun out of her eyes.' But belike Nelly'd took a turn agin the thing wid the way they'd all been makin' fun of it; for sez she, 'Will you have it, Bell?' sez she, houldin' it out to her. And if she did, Mad Bell grabbed it in her two hands—it's not often she'll have a word for anybody—and no more talk about it, but cocked it on, and tied it firm under her chin wid the sthramers, as tasty as you plase. Musha good gracious, to see the len'th she drew the bow out on aich side of her bit of a yeller face, and the nod she gave her ould head when she'd got it done. So that's what's gone wid the hat. Goodness guide us, if she wasn't the poor crazy-witted body she is, 'twould be a sin to let her go makin' such a show of herself; but sure no one 'ud think to mind anythin' the likes of the crathur might have on her, the saints may pity her. Ay, bedad, them kind of quare consthructions do be fit for nothin' unless Quality and mad people," old Mrs. Walsh continued, without malice, soliloquising, as Joe had caught up the can, and was hurrying it with prodigal splashes towards his sweetheart's door.
The circus, with its flaring lights and whirl of tinselled prancing marvels, was so rapturous an experience to Nelly that she had not a regret for her discarded hat, which at this time was moving on beneath a soft dappled sky, between greening hedges, westward along quiet roads and lanes. It found shelter for the night under the ley of a tall hayrick near Santry, thus ending the first stage of Mad Bell's tramp home to the wide brown bogland of Lisconnel.