Poor Mickey! and he that hadn’t a woman at all! The dealer of course being strange couldn’t know that, nor why Hughie gave a laugh out of him then.
But that didn’t matter. Mickey took no notice. A man that’s a bit “thick” escapes many a prod that another would feel sharp. So in all things you can see how them that are afflicted are looked after in some little way we don’t know.
The dealer looked at the calves again.
“Troth, I’m thinking it’s the wrong ones yous have here! Yous must have forgotten them fine three-pound calves at home!”
And Mickey began looking very anxiously at them, as if he thought maybe he had made some mistake.
“Them calves,” says the dealer slowly, “isn’t like a pretty girl, that every one will be looking to get! And, besides, they’re no size! A terrible small calf they are!”
“Small!” said Barney, “it’s too big they are! And if they’re little, itself, what harm! Isn’t a mouse the prettiest animal you might ask to see!”
“Ay is it!” says the dealer, “but it’ll take a power of mice to stock a farm!” and off with him, in a real passion, by the way of.
But Barney knew better than to mind. The dealer came back, and at long last the calves were sold and paid for. Then the luck-penny had to be given. Hard-set Barney was to get Heffernan to do that. In the end, Mickey was so bothered over it, that he dropped a shilling just where Hughie was standing leaning his weight on the one crutch as usual.
As quick as a flash, he had the other up, and made a kind of a lurch forward, as if to look for the money. But he managed to get the second crutch down upon the shilling, to hide it; and then he looked round about upon the ground, as innocent as a child, as if he was striving his best to find the money for Mickey.