CHAPTER II
THE GAME LEG
Heffernan’s house at the Furry Farm stood very backwards from the roadside, hiding itself, you’d really think, from any one that might be happening by. As if it need do that! Why, there was no more snug, well-looked-after place in the whole of Ardenoo than Heffernan’s always was, with full and plenty in it for man and beast, though it wasn’t to say too tasty-looking.
And it was terrible lonesome. There wasn’t a neighbour within the bawl of an ass of it. Heffernan of course had always been used to it, so that he didn’t so much mind; still, he missed Art, after he going off with little Rosy Rafferty. That was nigh-hand as bad upon him as losing the girl herself. He had got to depend on Art for every hand’s turn, a thing that left him worse when he was without him. And he was very slow-going. As long as Julia was there, she did all, and Heffernan might stand to one side and look at her. And so he missed her now, more than ever; and still he had no wish to see her back, though even to milk the cows came awkward to him.
He was contending with the work one evening, and the calves in particular were leaving him distracted, above all, a small little white one that he designed for Rosy, when he’d have her Woman of the House at the Furry Farm. That calf, I needn’t say, was not the pick of the bunch, but as Mickey thought to himself, a girl wouldn’t know any better than choose a calf by the colour, and there would be no good wasting anything of value on her. At all events it would be “child’s pig and daddy’s bacon,” most likely, with that calf. But, sure, what matter! Rosy was never to have any call to it, or anything else at the Furry Farm.
Those calves were a very sweet lot, so that Mickey might have been feeling all the pleasure in life, just watching them, with their soft little muzzles down in the warm, sweet milk, snorting with the pure enjoyment. But Mickey was only grousing to get done, and vexed at the way the big calves were shoving the little ones away, and still he couldn’t hinder them. Art used to regulate them very simple by means of a little ash quick he kept, to slap the forward calves across the face when they’d get too impudent. But as often as Mickey had seen him do that, he couldn’t do the same. The ash quick was so close to him that if it had been any nearer it would have bitten him. Stuck up in a corner of the bit of ruin that had once been Castle Heffernan it was. But it might as well have been in America for all the good it was to Mickey.
“I wish to God I was rid of the whole of yous, this minute!” says he to himself, and he with his face all red and steamy, and the milk slobbering out of the pail down upon the ground, the way the calves were butting him about the legs.
That very minute, he heard a sound behind him. He turned about, and my dear! the heart jumped into his mouth, as he saw a great, immense red face, just peeping over the wall that shut in his yard from the boreen. That wall was no more than four feet high. Wouldn’t any one think it strange to see such a face, only that far from the ground! and it with a bushy black beard around it, and big rolling eyes, and a wide old hat cocked back upon it? You’d have to think it was something “not right”; an Appearance or Witchery work of some kind.
But, let alone that, isn’t there something very terrifying and frightful in finding yourself being watched, when you think you’re alone; and, of all things, by a man? The worst of a wild beast wouldn’t put the same bad fear in your heart.
“Good-evening, Mr. Heffernan,” says the newcomer, with a grin upon him, free and pleasant; “that’s a fine lot of calves you have there!”
Heffernan was so put about that he made no answer, and the man went on to say, “Is it that you don’t know me? Sure, you couldn’t forget poor old Hopping Hughie as simple as that!”