CHAPTER III
THE “REST OF HIM”
This is how it happened with poor Mickey Heffernan that he was left with a “game” leg, soon after he had had that falling-out with Art and the Raffertys, on account of the little girl there. His sister Julia came home, of course, as soon as she got word about the accident. She looked after him well, and not alone that, but she managed the outside work about the place too, till Mickey was so far recovered as to be able to get about himself; at first on two crutches like Hughie himself, and then by degrees he was well enough to do with just a stick.
Well and good. As long as he was helpless, and depending on Julia for everything, she and he hit it off together, all right. A contrary woman is often like that. She’ll let you do nothing, as long as you are well, and would be able for a bit of sport and amusement. But once you are laid up so that you could enjoy nothing, she’ll encourage you to do the very things that would enrage her at other times.
This explains how it was that Julia flew into a tearing rage one morning, when Mickey was on his feet again, because he asked for a second egg for his breakfast. While he was in bed, she would be trying to force food on him, when he had no appetite for anything; I’m not saying that this is why she pressed the things on him; but anyway, now that he was up again and had a wish for food, it seemed as if she grudged it to him.
With Julia, one word borrowed another, although Mickey never made her answer. It saves quarrelling most times, but not with Julia. She would work herself into a rage all the more when he kept quiet and seemed to take no notice. Of course, that is an annoying thing. The end of it was, that Julia went off again, to stay with some friends in Dublin it was, this time.
It was a foolish step for Julia to take, but to be sure she did not know what was in Mickey’s mind, nor how having lost little Rosy Rafferty had not put him off the notion of getting a wife. It was only more anxious than ever he was now to be married. He was just as glad to be quit of Julia, the way he could be looking about him, without any interference from her. In fact, he knew very well that his only chance would be to take the ball at the hop, and look out for a woman that would be suitable, when Julia would be out of the way.
How he managed in the long run to rid himself of Julia was a most curious affair. Of all the people in Ardenoo, Peter Caffrey was the last that he would have expected help from in the business.
Peter, or Peetcheen as he was mostly always called, was the only boy that was left of the Caffreys at the cross-roads, before you come to the turn leading on to Clough-na-Rinka. A very long, weak family of them there used to be there. The poor mother found it hard to keep going at all, particularly after the father died. In fact, Dark Molly Reilly would say, she really thought Almighty God must have some little way of His own of feeding people like the Caffreys, that no one knew anything about.
They had the house for nothing, anyway. But a bad house it was; the roof let in wet, every time rain fell, the same as if it was coming through a sieve. And the smoke from the hearth curled up in clouds, and escaped by the door just as freely as it did through the chimney. It was old Peter Caffrey, Peetcheen’s grandfather, that he was called after, that had built the house himself, and had managed to edge it in on a piece of waste ground that no one could claim; so that’s how there was no rent to be paid. That is a great help to any one, to be rent-free; let alone to the Caffreys, that were always as poor as Job’s dog. There never was one of them had two halfpence to jingle on a tombstone. But still, poor and all as they were, they managed to be cheerful and contented and would suffer on, someway. It was the mother that saw to that.
One of the longest things that Peetcheen could look back on was the way Miss O’Farrell from the Big House laughed one day that she happened to be passing by and overheard Dark Moll passing the time of day with his father.