He never made her an answer, only let her put him sitting in front of the fire, and there he remained and not a word out of his head; and the wet steaming out of his clothes and he white with cold and pure misery. Kitty was frightened when she got a good look at him. But she said nothing, only gave him some hot tea, and when he had that taken, and his wet brogues were pulled off, “Thank God!” he said, “that I’m safe back again!”
“Ay, agra,” said Kitty; “but where did you leave poor Rosy? I never thought she’d stop away from the child, above all....”
“Stop away? ay, and that’s what she’s apt to do!”
“Ora, Dan, what’s this you’re saying?”
And Kitty began to cry again.
The life was coming back to Dan and the colour to his face, and said he, “I’ll tell ye now! no, poor Rosy you’ll never see again.... She’ll scarce pass the night, the Lord have mercy on her soul!”
“Oh, Dan! is it the truth you’re telling me?”
“It is, it is, God’s truth! You spoke of me looking as if I was after seeing a ghost, when I came in here this morning, to warn you that she was coming. Well, when I was going along with her in the cart to the Union, the heart would die in me betimes, the way she’d be going on....”
“What way?”
“Och, laughing mostly, and talking to herself. ‘Poor Art!’ she’d cry; ‘the day he near cut the thumb off himself, instead of one of the seed potatoes!’ and then about some pickther they got from Tommy the Crab ... and something about Wild Geese ... romancing she must have been. I could not know the half of what she was saying.