“Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, I believe,” said Big Cusack, who was talking to her. He was as proud as Punch to know that Julia was gone out of the Furry Farm. For then he thought there need not be much delay about Heffernan’s own marriage; and Cusack had a niece of his own, Kitty Dempsey by name, that he wanted to make up a match for. Kitty was only a young slip of a thing, but there was a bit of land she was to come in for; and her Uncle Cusack, being an experiented man, thought Heffernan would be more suitable for her, nor any young boy, on that account.
“She’s as sweet as you please, that wife of Peetcheen’s, by all a body hears,” he went on; and then he added, “but there’s such a thing as being too sweet to be wholesome! She’s none too young, either! A chicken her age won’t die with the pip!”
“No,” said Moll, “nor tear in the plucking! But sure, a boy like Peetcheen couldn’t be too partickler!”
“You’re right there,” says Big Cusack; “and he wid a head upon him that you’d think should fizz, if he put it into could water, it’s that red! And the mouth of him! the same as if it was made wid a blow of a shovel! Isn’t he great, that got a wife at all! let alone the forchune. And has the two heifers at grass on my farm; and persuades the wife that the field they’re grazing on belongs to himself! Peetcheen may be slow, but he’s no such a fool as the people make him out!”
That was how Cusack spoke of him; and indeed, it was wonderful, all the praise you’d hear of Peetcheen now, very different from what it was before he went away, when every one would be making a hare of him. He himself would walk about, very important, going over to “have a look at the stock,” as if that would make them fatten any faster. And the way he would give a cock to his caubeen when he’d meet a neighbour, and pass the time of the day with him! And on a Sunday, to see him yoking up the jennet, to drive to Mass, feeling as good as the best! In fact, after a bit, the neighbours began to laugh at him again. It might have been jealousy.
“Cock him up, indeed!” Big Cusack said, when he had time to take this all in; “letting on he’s a gintleman, all out, Peetcheen is! with nothing to do, only ait his food! And in troth, the sorra long it will take them, to ait whatever forchune the wife brought into the place! It wasn’t much, I’ll go bail! There never was a Heffernan yet that would part money without a wrangle for it; and Mickey the same!”
All this was true; but nothing seemed to trouble Peetcheen. He spent the time the way I tell you; never appearing to imagine there was any necessity for him to do anything more than that.
But he had the wife to reckon with. She was of a very different way of thinking, and she very soon let him know her mind.
“What way is this to be going on?” she would say, “for a man to be at home here under a body’s feet from morning to night, as if the place wasn’t small enough, and in partickler since I brought me own good furnicher into it! Hard-set I’ll be, ever to get meself used to the likes of this house you brought me to!”
Julia was right enough in saying this. The Caffreys’ place was very small and poor, compared to the Furry farmhouse, where she was reared. And her things did crowd it up. The big chair alone took up the whole side of the fire. But as well as that, she was only saying what was true, when she spoke of Peetcheen sitting at home all day, as he had the fashion of doing.