“Ah, for what?” cried Nelly.
“I ... I have something to say to ye!” said Christina; and she wished she hadn’t.
“Oh, won’t it keep?” says Nelly, that had often been called back that way, to be told how to behave, and to not be wild ... and she had no edge on for being lectured then.
She thought it was bad enough, having to go off with Mickey by herself....
“That’s all right! come along!” said Heffernan.
He was thinking, the poor old man, that it was what Nelly wanted to be hurrying off with him.
“Mind, now! I told you to listen to me!” said Christina, very serious. Yet she was relieved when Nelly just laughed and went on to the hayfield. And Christina called out, “I’ll be after you, Mr. Heffernan, as soon as ever I have the place readied up. And glad I’ll be of an advice about that hay.”
“Och, sure there’s no occasion for you to be in too great a hurry!” said Heffernan, quite talkative.
When they were started, “I could do no more!” said Christina to herself, looking after them, Nelly like a child, frisking along beside Heffernan and his limp, and she chattering away to him and amusing him. There’s the sort Nelly Flanagan was; always ready to please whoever was next to her.
Plenty there are like that; plenty of girls, pretty and pleasant and smiling. But there’s nothing more! no more than if it was a picture you had hanging by a nail from your wall. But God made them, and the men like them.