But she never did.
And so best. It’s a poor thing, to be looking at happiness through another person’s eyes; even if you chance to be as fond of them as Christina was of Nelly, let alone of Jim.
And it’s bad enough to fret for doing wrong. But isn’t it worse again to have to feel yourself sorry, and you after doing what you knew was right! as it was with Christina. But there’s many a thing that it’s hard to explain, as well as what the Flanagans saw in the sunshine, that day crossing the Big Meadow.
CHAPTER V
MATCHMAKING IN ARDENOO
There was of course a good deal of talk among the neighbours about all that took place at Greenan-more, just soon after old Flanagan dying there. To say nothing of the queer way Jim Cassidy appeared (as they said), to the two girls, that Sunday evening, when they were out in the hayfield, with old Heffernan ... and anyway, nothing was farther from Nelly’s thoughts then than the same Jim! whatever poor Christina may have had in her mind!... To say nothing of this at all, wasn’t it a shocking affair to see a fine, good girl like Christina, going out of this world the way she did! no one to know what became of her, no more than if she never had been there at all!
Still, the people didn’t speak so much over it as you might expect. They felt Nelly and Jim wouldn’t like it. Besides, there was talk of Christina’s being “away”; and as every one knows, it doesn’t answer to be too free-spoken about the Good People.
Very little of the talk reached Mickey Heffernan, as usual. He lived very backwards, as has been said; he heard little, and he said less. It was the fashion he had, and it served him well. It did now, for it helped him to believe that no one knew a word about his having wanted little Nelly Flanagan for himself. In fact, very few did and they soon forgot it, there was so much else to be talked about. Mickey was very proud to think that the business with Nelly had gone no further; any man would feel the same. But instead of this taking the edge off him for getting married, it only made him the more anxious to hear of some other girl that would come in upon the floor of the Furry Farm. Julia was gone out of his way; so why would he not strive to bring a wife in there?
Little Kitty Dempsey was the next he looked to get; and a very curious way that came about. Not that any man was to be blamed for fancying Kitty! She had every one’s good word, the same little girl.
“A very nice little cut of a person,” it would be said of her, “agreeable and pleasant-spoken in herself; noways uppish or short with any one. And the darlint blue eyes of her, that she can say what she chooses with! Sometimes they’ll laugh, like running water in sunshine; and again, they’ll fill up, if she’s fretted, till they’d remind you of nothing so much as a shower of an April day. And as straight she is as a rush, and as light on her foot as a willy-wagtail; like a young larch tree, slim and upright; and wouldn’t any one sooner be looking at the like of that than at one that has been twisted and bent by the wind on the side of a hill, or has had the half of it ett away by a hungry colt? Oh, there’s some girls that there does be a power of marrying on, before they can be settled! But troth! that’s not so with Kitty Dempsey!”
In fact, at this time, though Kitty was young yet, it was the wonder of Ardenoo that she wasn’t married long ago, for as they said, it wasn’t her looks stood in her way; though she never got to be as rosy in the face and flauhoolich[11] as her sisters all were. Many a time they blamed Kitty for that, as if she could help how she looked! But the father, old Dick Dempsey, would whisper to Kitty: