The folk of Furry Farm

by K. F. Purdon

It’s dreadful, when you have to look on, at some one else getting the very thing that you would give your heart’s blood for! Ah, dreadful! even if it’s some one you love that’s robbing you. And it makes it no better, if the one that’s getting what you want is maybe not caring two straws about it; not even knowing it’s there to be had. Nelly didn’t; she had no more notion of Jim and how he felt than the man in the moon. Christina could not have held out at all if she had known.

I won’t say that Nelly didn’t feel a bit lonesome for Jim. She missed him coming about the place, as he had the fashion of doing. But she never thought much of anything, and she was so beautiful and so nice every way, that she could not but be happy. Why, when she’d be going to the chapel of a Sunday, the boys would be striving with one another to get where they could have the full of their eyes of little Nelly Flanagan. And a girl can’t but know something of what goes on in that way; and feel it a satisfaction, too. There wasn’t one in Ardenoo could hold a candle to Nelly in point of looks. Christina was well enough, too, a very fine appearance of a girl she was, no doubt. But she was older and more settled in her ways, than Nelly, hadn’t the same happy, laughing looks and little tricks and fun. How could Christina be like that and she with the weight of the work on her shoulders always, not to speak of the care of Nelly, from the time she was born! It had made her very quiet and grave in herself; as if she had left youth behind her, long ago, though in years what was she but a girl still?

Jim wasn’t very long gone off, when what happened, only old Flanagan took and died on the two poor girls. And you would wonder to see how they lamented him; and he so little use to them, or indeed to himself either, or any one else, except maybe the play-boys that he would be consorting with, whenever he had the money to stand treat. And small good that was going to be, to them or him!

Still, when any one is gone and laid in the grave, there’s no one going to say anything but what is good of them; and so by old Flanagan. And of course his own girls were the last to hear of any little faults or follies he had to do with. That made it all the harder on them, when things began to be looked into, and it was found out that there was a lot of money owing on the farm. The girls had always trusted their father, the way women mostly do. Christina had felt a bit anxious at times, but still, she had managed to keep middling straight at the Shop by bringing in her eggs and butter and so on, to exchange them against whatever tea and sugar, flour and meal and soap and whatever else she wanted in the housekeeping line. That was the way the weight of the business was done at Melia’s. Christina knew pretty well how their account stood there. But she never had any intelligence of anything further. The father had the notion that many men have, that women understood nothing about money, and the less they had to say to it the better. So it was a terrible surprise to Christina when she found out, after the father died, that there was rent owing on the farm. The agent was very easy-going, and had let it run on out of good-nature to old Flanagan. But now he was beginning to think that the two girls would not be a very good mark for all that money. And although he talked to them as kind as could be, he was beginning to hint to others that maybe girls like the Flanagans would be as well off without the responsibility of so much land, when there wasn’t a man to work it. He really may have thought they would be better off in a smaller place. But besides that, he knew well that old Heffernan would be glad enough to get Greenan-more, because it lay so convenient to his own farm; and that maybe if he could arrange to let him have it, he’d be getting a hand-over for himself. And of course he wanted to do the best for himself, like the rest of us.

Christina didn’t understand all these things, but she began to feel very downhearted, as if there was trouble in store for them, when the next rent-day was coming round, and she knew how little there was to meet what was due. That was bad; but her own care, that no one knew of but herself, was far worse. She could neither eat nor sleep, thinking, thinking always.

Well, she was sitting at the door one evening, knitting, when who did she see coming up the hill towards her but Mickey Heffernan. She spoke to him very civilly, as she always would, but wondered greatly what was bringing him there. For it was seldom he took the light from their door, or indeed from any other door either. He lived to himself, and so he, too, had little notion of what was going on about the place. It would have been a big surprise to him, too, if any one had told him that there was any idea of his getting Greenan-more.

But that nothing to the business he had really come about; a most amazing thing it was! Christina could hardly believe her ears, when at last Mickey brought it out.

It appeared that he had been taking notice of Nelly; had had a good look at her, the day the father was in his burying. And now, nothing would do him, only to see to get her to marry him.

And he said to Christina: “If I have your good word with her, the thing is as good as done; she’ll agree to do what you say. And if she does, you’ll never regret it! For I’ll regulate things for you, as well as for her. And I needn’t say, my wife’ll never want ...” and all to that.

Christina listened to him with a whirling mind. All the thoughts that came up before her then! She could not separate them from one another. There was a bit of a song that kept repeating itself, about an old man trying to get a young wife; and why the words went singing themselves through her head——