“One thing moiders another!” as the man with the toothache said, when he felt the pain going into his ear. And if a girl has Phil, and Jack, Mike, and Pat as well as Art, it’s likely she’ll not fret too much about any of them if they go off, as Dan did.
However, you never know what turn a young mind will take. People differ, as well as the things they happen up against. Kitty wasn’t like other girls; and those that knew her best never wished that she was.
All the same, good and contented as she strove to be, it was hard on her! Year in, year out, going on the one old gait; her nose for ever to the grindstone. And along with all, if anything went wrong, Mrs. Dempsey would take and scold at Kitty, most bitterly, as if the girl was to be blamed when the potatoes turned black, or the oats got lodged, beaten into the ground with the heavy dreeps of rain.
As for the fow! That was what had the old woman more annoyed than anything. The rage she got into, one season, when a lot of young goslings died! She said it was what Kitty had neglected them, and that she cared for nothing, only idling her time over her geranium-pot. Now it was true that Kitty did think a lot of that flower, and no one but herself knew, or cared, that it was Dan Grennan that had brought it to her, and it only a little weeny bit of a thing. Kitty had minded it so well, that it flourished up the finest ever was seen. She was very fond of flowers, but any little bit of a garden that ever she made, something happened it; either the pigs rooted it, or the hens tore it about. So to keep her geranium-pot safe, it was up on top of the pump she had it, the time the goslings died.
Mrs. Dempsey was making for it, to fling it pot and all out of that, when, behold ye! she was took bad all of a sudden. Some kind of Blessed Sickness it was; and in the clap of your hand, it left her speechless, and with no power of herself from the waist down, ever after. In fact she didn’t last too long after this happening. But, of course, Kitty nor no one could know but she might live for years yet.
When she was laid up that way, it left Kitty there, nothing but a bird alone, as you might say; the mother good for nothing, only having to be fed and minded, the same as an infant child, and twice as hard to please as any baby. Kitty was that tender-hearted, that she fretted, night, noon, and morning, when the old woman wasn’t able to speak; though what all the neighbours were saying was, “Won’t poor Kitty have great ease, now that the mother’s tongue is stopped, the ould torment!”
But to listen to Kitty, you would believe there never was another mother so good on the face of the earth, as what she had herself.
Shortly after this taking place with the Dempseys, the fair-day of Timahoe came round. Dark Moll Reilly was in it, of course, herself and her fiddle. No wake nor wedding nor sport of any kind was right about Ardenoo, without Moll.
There was people of the opinion that the dark woman could see more than she let on to be able to; and that it was just a gait of going she put on, the way she could get a better acquaintance with things that were not meant for her. Certain it is that there wasn’t a stir, far or near, or anything going on about Ardenoo, but what Moll always had the first whimper of it. But no one ever heard a bad word from her, about any son of men; nor she wouldn’t either. She knew only too well, that she ought to be careful, and not have the people afraid of her tongue. In that way, she had many a snug stopping-place, where she was always made welcome, with her fiddle and her chat about everything, because the people felt Moll wasn’t one to carry stories. Besides, she was a knowledgeable person, and very understanding, and had made up many a match among the neighbours at Ardenoo.
Going away from the fair she was, this day, when Big Cusack, that was a brother of Mrs. Dempsey’s, overtook her on the road, and asked her would she sit up on the side-car with him, and he could be giving her a lift as far as he was going her way.