The folk of Furry Farm

by K. F. Purdon

The funeral took place, and a most pitiful sight it was, to see the two coffins going off together, past the end of the little boreen where the Raffertys used to live, and on to the graveyard of Clough-na-Rinka. There was a fine wake before that; full and plenty of everything, so that even Dark Moll hadn’t a word to say, only compliments.

“But what else could a body expect?” says she to Marg, “your mother’s child couldn’t but do the thing decent, when you’d go about it! and the same at the Furry Farm itself. A good dependence Mr. Heffernan is for all that are living under him, and of course that’s what Kitty and Dan Grennan are looking to, when they were so ready to agree to keep the babby; and it a Heffernan, too!”

Marg made no answer to Moll about this. It’s a thing often to be remarked, how that a man and his wife will grow to be like one another. Marg Molally had never been much of a talker; and now that she was Marg Heffernan, she wasn’t getting much practice at chin-wagging, and had grown nearly as silent as Mickey himself.

She said nothing, but what Moll had remarked made her think. It’s a little puff that will make a blazing fire. Moll had put into words what had been floating through her own mind.

The little baby at Grennan’s! and it a Heffernan! Well Marg was aware, though Mickey had never said so, that he’d wish to have one of the old name to come after him. And she shared that feeling, in a way. She was beginning to feel a pride in the Furry Farm and everything about the place that was her home now. Why wouldn’t Art’s child have some rights there? The people used to be saying, before Art had gone off with Rosy, that he stood a good chance for coming in for whatever Mickey had to leave. Then why not this baby?

But what would Heffernan himself say to this? He mightn’t care for it at all. There would be the expense.... Marg had always been a careful girl, but she was more so than ever now. She couldn’t be near and narrow, like Mickey himself; it wasn’t in her. But she knew he’d like to see her saving. So she got the fashion of it, to humour the old man that was so good to her in his own way.... And how would he like to see money being spent on Art’s child?

And a child that wasn’t her own! how would that be? Marg Heffernan was really puzzled about it. She couldn’t let the thoughts of the little child out of her mind; it kept coming between her and her work in the daytime and her rest at night. And it was all the harder on her, because she kept it all to herself. Speak of it to Mickey? She couldn’t do that. If he’d say “no!” away would go the dreams.... For she never went against her husband in anything. But if only....

There’s how she was considering the thing, over and over, up and down and every way, one evening that she was crossing the fields to Kitty Grennan’s. The fuss of the wake and funeral was over by then, and the Furry Farm was more like itself again.

Before she reached the house at all, she could hear the singing and laughing and noise going on inside, the same as ever, only more so. And when she got there, and was leaning in over the half-door, there, hadn’t Kitty the big washing-tub over by the fire, on the floor, and she kneeling beside it, talking and chirping away, that it would do you good to be listening to her.

“God bless your work!” said Marg.