Marg couldn’t but listen to him, for she was too much surprised to do anything else. Puzzled too she was. For she was thinking of the Face she had seen at the Well; and she had known that to be Patsy Ratigan. And now here was a big, red-faced, puffy-looking man, saying that he was Ratigan!
God knows, there’s many a thing remains a puzzle! not to speak of what a body might chance upon, of a Hallow Eve.
But she got no time then to think this out, for of all the romancing that ever was heard, and Ratigan reeled it out of him then.
“Little I thought, that when we’d meet, you would have forgotten me!” he said; “but sure enough, there’s the way...!
“The full pig in the sty
Thinks little of the empty one passing by!
“And I working and slaving off there in America, and never thinking when I came back, that I’d find meself forgot by every one, and you marrit!”
“Marrit!” said Marg; “and what about yourself? and the widdah with her shop ... and the six children?”
“Widdah? What widdah?” said Ratigan; “who was it at all that put round that story upon me? I only wish I had him here!” says he, very courageous, “and I’d soon show him the differ! And you to believe that of me! I couldn’t have believed it of you ... only for seeing it now! All I wonder is,” he went on, very bitter, “that it wasn’t ten widdahs! and sixty children that they had laid out for me! And I that was thinking of no one, only the girl at Ardenoo that I used to be helping of an evening with the bullocks ... and of the welcome home she would have for me, whenever I’d come back!”
Phwat! what he had in his mind was, that he had had enough of the hard work in America, and the hurry and noise there, once the widdah died, the crature. And her children took and threw Ratigan out of that; and it appeared then that they owned the shop and money, once the widdah was gone. And a loss it was to Patsy, that he hadn’t inquired fully into the thing before he got married. But when he had to quit out of the shop, where he had lived very nice and easy, and found he would have to earn for himself, he began to turn over in his mind about Ardenoo. Maybe Marg Molally was to the good still. And he knew her to be a good warrant to work. Moreover, he remembered that Ardenoo was a pleasant place for being idle in; and that’s what he liked best always.