“Och sure, how was I to know would you wish that?” said Ratigan, very humble in himself; and then Margaret’s heart softened towards him.
“You’re not going out in that dreep of rain?” says he, noticing that Marg was pulling up her cloak about her shoulders, where she had it undone, while she was drinking her cup of tea; “teeming out of the skies it is, as if all the wathers of the salt seas I have to cross was coming down upon Ardenoo!”
“I’ll have to face out, rain or no rain,” said Marg; “I have a long ways before me!”
“I’ve a longer!” says he; and he puffed a big sigh out of him; “and has to go wid meself....”
“You should be used to that!” says Marg.
He had her persuaded that he never was married at all.
“I ought to be, I know,” said Ratigan; “but I haven’t the short memory I see with some people for the old times! But them that’s in heaven themselves, finds it easy to forget all else; and thim that’s snug and warm in their own home, has little thought for them that has to be without in cold and wet and hardship!”
“There’s more a body wants than food and fire,” says Marg, as if she was thinking out loud.
“Ay is there! that’s a true word!” said Ratigan.
He was thinking at that present, that he wanted the price of his passage back to America, as badly as ever a man wanted anything! He had squandered away the money he had got for the cattle he had stolen, in paying Mrs. Melia some of what he owed her, and the rest drinking and spreeing. And now he was after hearing through the chink in the hay-loft all that the dealer had been saying to Marg. He knew about the money she had been putting away; and he knew, too, about the polis, and the danger he was in. And he felt that the sooner he could quit out of that the better it would be for his health.