He should not have said that; giving her an opening.
“Troth, I dunno about that!” said she, and was twice as vexed, because poor Dan was so quiet-spoken with her; “that depends,” she says, “but a boy that has nothing between him and the world only his two hands has no call in life,” she says, “to be here, colloguing[12] with my dauther!”
Mrs. Dempsey was a Cusack, and held herself very high. She turned to Kitty, that was as red as roses by then.
“Off with ye, and bring in that water, that I’m sick and tired waiting on!”
Kitty was ready enough to go. Ashamed she felt, to have that word said to Dan, and she by. She went off, without giving him word or look. How could she, with the mother stumping along behind her, as big as a bush and as red as a turkey-cock!
“And she gobbling out of her, too!” said Dan to himself, as he sneaked off, with a very sore heart. He was a fine, big, able boy, that you would never think troubled his head about anything. But boys like that have times that they want comforting, as well as another. Dan was out of a job then, and he was intended to ask an advice of Kitty, whether he ought to go to England for the harvest or not, only when he saw her, he forgot everything else except little Kitty Dempsey. He was not to be blamed for that. You would maybe have done the same yourself.
But the very next day after Mrs. Dempsey giving him his walking-papers, as I said, Dan got a job of driving a lot of cattle out to Dublin market. And when he had that done, he bobbed up against a comrade-boy of his own, and this boy was after taking his passage to America. And he was so lonesome in himself, to be going away, that he offered the lend of money to Dan, the way they could go together. I needn’t say Dan jumped at the chance.
But he had to start off as he stood; and no one at Ardenoo knew a word about his going, for long enough. So there was many a mile of salt water between poor Dan and Kitty, and still Mrs. Dempsey would be going to the well herself of an evening. It was the price of her, to be putting such rounds upon herself, and for what? But as Dan said long after, when he and Kitty would be talking over things, “Divil’s cure to them that has a bad suspicion of others!”
Kitty used to fret a good deal, wondering how it was that she never saw Dan nor heard anything about him, since the time her mother caught her and him together behind the turf-clamp. But she passed no remarks to man nor mortal. And one day that she and the mother were at Melia’s shop, where the post-office is, a letter was slipped to Kitty, that no one saw only herself. Mrs. Melia knew well the sort old Mrs. Dempsey was, and so did every one else about Ardenoo.
Kitty had to keep that letter in her pocket, and it burning a hole there, till she was going to bed that night before she had any opportunity of opening it. What was there inside of it, only a picture of Dan, all done out so grand and fine, that you would scarcely know it to be Dan at all, only his name was written under it. And on the back of the picture there was this verse: