So Mickey just sat there, with no one only himself, in the dusky kitchen; and all the cheerfulness he thought to see before was gone. The place seemed to him to have a desolate appearance upon it, that he had never noticed before. But the sorra change was on it, no more than the night will have got any darker really, when you go out into it after you being for a while in a room that was full up of light. It was himself that was different, after seeing into Rafferty’s, where the fire was small enough, God knows! but the hearth was swep’ up tidy and nice. The table was old and shaky there, but it was scoured as white as the snow. And the wheel was singing its own little song of cheerful work, and there was talk and laughing going on; and, above all, the gay shining little head of Rosy, that lit it up, like a bit of sunshine come down out of the skies. Whereas Heffernan’s kitchen was all through-other, just as they had got up after their dinners ... plates and pots and praty-skins all lying hither and over. The fire was nigh-hand out, and it all as silent as the grave.
“And not a sod of turf left in!” says Heffernan to himself; “that’s a nice way for Art to be leaving the place, and he ped to mind it!”
Out with him to the clamp, to get an armful of turf; and didn’t the two pigs meet him full, and they coming back from the garden, after they rooting there to their heart’s content.
“There’s more of it, now!” he thinks to himself; “and a nice job I’ll have of it, striving to get them back to their sty! Bad scran to Art! I never seen such work! Cock him up, indeed! going off to his randy-voos, instead of minding his business!”
But it was really himself that Mickey ought to have blamed in regard to the pigs, with his fidgeting about and not fastening the door of the pigsty right, that had a loose hinge and required humouring, and had a right to be mended, along with all. But to the day of his death, Heffernan blamed them pigs on Art. And, still, he never let on a word to him of what was after happening about them. He was too angry, besides having a slow tongue. It was only in to himself he’d talk and argue.
“I wondher, now, what else Art neglected here,” he thought, “to make off wid himself to Rafferty’s! How anshis he is, about the Widdah’s work! In troth, it’s kissin’ the child for the sake of the nurse he is! Coortin’, are ye? Maybe there’ll be more nor one word to be said about that! I might manage to clip yer wings for ye, me boyo, as sure as there’s a leg in a pot! And of all the chat he was having out of him...! But sure Art could talk down a hedgeful of sparrows, anny day of the year!”
There’s the way he kept thinking over the thing, and there’s how he began first having a bad suspicion of Art, that the poor boy never earned. But just because he never spoke of what was in his mind, it kept rolling over and over there, till there was nothing so bad but what he thought Art was capable of it.
Art never minded. Heffernan was always a bit dark in himself. So Art never got the chance of saying a word for himself, nor knew he was being watched and blamed and he going on the one way, off wid himself every evening to Rafferty’s, and would come back that happy and smiling that Mickey would be madder nor a wet hen, looking at him.
So there’s the way it went on with the two of them; Heffernan sour and silent and miserable in himself; and Art noways put about, only quite gay and satisfied from morning till night.
At last Heffernan made up his mind what he’d do. There came an evening ... a summer’s evening it was, more betoken ... and when Art walked into Rafferty’s as usual, he found Rosy drowned in grief, and she crying down the tears as if she was after losing all belonging to her.