“Why did you let her go?”
“If you had stopped in, as I asked you, you’d know why!” said Kitty; “but it’s to the Union she’s making now.... What ails you, to be standing there talking, instead of going after her?”
“And what will I do, when I do catch her?” said Dan, very meek and humble.
“What is there to do, only go with her? Isn’t the little ass yoked there, that you had out with fodder to the bullocks this morning? God be with the day the same ass fell lame, and had to be kept at Heffernan’s.... Marg that was coming back from the fair with her.... But do you be off now ... here, take the ould umbrell’ with you, and ... and see here! the quilt from the bed will help to keep some of the wet off her ... and let you throw a sack about your own shoulders....”
Dan did all that, and started the old donkey off as well as he could. Short and sweet like an ass’s gallop, as the saying is, and she soon failed at it, but he was able to overtake Rosy. And as soon as Kitty, that was watching from the door, saw that he had got her settled into the cart, she went back to Rosy’s baby, and began to cry.
“And the others all gone from her! Dublin must be a hard place to rear a child. To think this is the only one she has left, God comfort her!”
But it wasn’t long Kitty could spend lamenting like that. She had too much to do, what with minding the two babies, and warming and feeding the other children, coming in wet and perished from school. So she didn’t feel till it was dark night down upon her. And then she began to think there must be something wrong, Dan was so long about getting back. And she felt uneasy, the night was so hard. It seemed as if the rain was never to stop.
Once she had the children all in bed and asleep, there wasn’t a sound to be heard, only the dreep, dreep of the wet from the thatch, and the crying of the wind in the chimney. She was sitting by the hearth, rocking the cradle. Every minute was like an hour. Kitty would look up at the old clock, and think something must have stopped it, the hands were moving round so slowly.
Suddenly, at long last, the door opened, and in staggered Dan. Kitty jumped up with her heart in her mouth; she was so spent with the long loneliness and the watching, that even to see him, though she had been expecting no one else, gave her a great start.
“Musha, Dan, what’s ‘on’ ye at all?” she said, taking him by the hand; for he was so unsteady on his legs that she began to think he had drink taken, though it was seldom Dan took a sup at all.