“I’m distracted!” said Marg; “out of me seven senses I am, and don’t know what I’m doing or saying, and has me poor little darlint there terrified! It’s the teethaches I have, and never closed an eye these two nights, only walking the floor ... and I tried all the remedies I can hear of....”
“The teethaches!” said Moll; “God help you, then, but it’s you that are to be pitied! Meself that used to be mortified with them, till all the teeth fell out. I got some ease then. But as for remedies, there’s no certain cure that ever I could hear of.... There’s charms, of course. And then there’s that Fairy Doctor ... he lives on beyant Clough-na-Rinka ... a seventh son he is, and does a lot of cures. It’s often I used to be thinking if only he was at that work of doing cures before my eyes got so bad ... but sure, it’s all the will of God! and nothing to be done for them poor eyes now; that day’s gone by for me. But for teethaches ... he’s most notorious for curing them. All he’ll do, is just pass his hand across the bad tooth, and the pain leaves it that instant minute....”
“I thought of him, over and over,” said Marg; “but how can I get to go, and himself gone off with the side-car?... I’d have to walk every step of the way. And it would be too far to carry the child; and worse to be leaving her here by herself.... I wouldn’t know what might happen her.... And the car’ll not be back till dark....”
“Sure, what of that?” said Moll; “can’t I be sitting here till either of yous is back, and keep an eye ... I mean, be minding the child? and let you go in the name of God!”
So that took place. Marg rolled her cloak about her and went flying off at a sweep’s trot, to get cured by the Fairy Doctor; and Moll settled herself in by the chimney-corner, in Mickey’s own big chair. She was a very gay old body, the very sort that children always love to be with. So before very long, she had little Brigid sitting on her lap, talking away.
“You do be very lonesome here betimes, don’t you?” said Moll.
“I do, middling,” said Brigid; “I am this evening, with every one gone off ... and Pat and Judy, that I do mostly have to play with, are gone too. Off a long ways they are; gone to buy hay for foddering the cattle, for the grass is beginning to run very short....”
That was the very word she had heard Heffernan saying when he was starting off with Dan awhile before. And whatever Brigid knew to be going on, she and her Comrade Children were to do the same.
“Where’s that you sent me mammy to?” she said then; “a Fairy Doctor, is it? and what kind of a thing is that?”
“Oh, there’s different sorts of Fairy-men,” said Moll; “and, moreover, of Fairy-women, too! Didn’t my very grandmother meet a Fairy-woman one evening, and she coming home from a dance at the cross-roads; ay, and the Fairy-woman had seven fairy children after her....”