For there’s the way it is wid women. When they get a daughter marrit, no matter to who, they’ll be that proud, the weight of them, that they wouldn’t call the King their cousin. And along with all, of course, Art Heffernan was known to be a very choice boy, only for he being poor. But, as it was often said at Ardenoo, why need that stop him in the getting of a wife? Why mightn’t he as well be a poor man as a poor boy?
“And to think of them sending me a keepsake!” says the mother; “dear, but that pickther is beautiful, the way it’s drew out!”
“There’s a crack across the face of it,” says Mickey; and there’s the only word he had out of them.
“So there is! and I never to observe it till you spoke!” says the Widdah, and she looking ready to go cry.
“Sure it will never be noticed!” says Tommy, “and moreover, I took a pinny off of the price, in compliment to that little defect,” and I’m not saying but he did. “Here!” says Tommy, “I’ll give you a nail into the bargain to hang it up by; and there’s a brave lump of a stone, to drive it in, and make it all safe upon the wall. Where will you wish to have it, mam?”
“Here, where I can be seeing it, and I sitting at the wheel,” says she.
So Tommy hammered in the nail.
“What’s the name of the pickther?” says the Widdah, and she standing back a piece off, the way she could get a good look at it.
“It’s called ‘The Flight of the Wild Geese,’” says Tommy, with a grin.
And Heffernan just gave one laugh out of him; like the cough of a sick sheep it was, and turned about and went home.