Cusack was sitting outside the door, smoking a pipe, and he went on to say, “What I often do be thinking is, why isn’t that fine decent girl married herself?”
“Musha, then you couldn’t tell, nor no one could!” said Moll; “nor yet how a thing of the kind might come about still!”
“Good and hard-working she is,” said Cusack, “and comes of a decent stock. And I understand she has a snug little fortune, that the poor father laid by for her, too. I don’t know, in this world wide, what the boys can be thinking about, that she’s not married long ago! They have no sense, or one of them would have had her before this!”
“Well, it’s often I heard it said,” answered Moll, “that every dog has his day; and that every woman gets her chance; and so it will be with Marg!”
She was thinking of the young cousin she had in her mind, to marry Marg. Little she or any one else except herself and the one boy knew that Margaret Molally had had her chance, years ago, and had let it pass her by! Marg was like other girls in that. But the difference was in herself.
People talk about girls and courting as if they were all made after the one pattern, and what one does is the same as all the rest. But girls are as different in their natures as in their looks. Some are all for fun with any boy they meet; and others are as shy and as silent and stiff as a young filly off the side of a mountain; and there are good and bad of both sorts.
Margaret was one of the quiet ones; timid and proud and humble always, though she needn’t have been, she was so fine and handsome. She would take the eye, anywhere, so that you would think she might pick and choose among the boys of Ardenoo. So whatever made her take a fancy to Patsy Ratigan, it would be hard to explain. For he was what is known as a “bit of a play-boy”; always up to some sport; as different from Marg as dark is from day. But she thought that the sun shone out of Patsy; and they would have made a match of it, sure enough, only for Marg’s brother going off to America, the way he did.
That was what upset all Margaret’s plans. In the first place, she saw very plainly that it would never do for her to be thinking of her own concerns, or to dream of leaving the old people. The father was failing in health, and the poor mother could do nothing but fret after Larry. That wasn’t all. When Larry went, he had taken Marg’s fortune with him; took it down from where it was hidden, up in the thatch, to pay his passage to America! the money that was saved for Margaret, and that she herself had helped to put together!
A mean, bad trick it was of Larry’s, so much so that the Molallys could not say a word about it, for shame’s sake, to think that their son should rob his own sister. At least, that is how Margaret and the father felt. But the poor mother took his part even then, and said, why wouldn’t he take it! Hadn’t a son as good a right as a daughter to anything about the place? and better, too! And then she cried and said, she never thought Marg would grudge his share to poor Larry! and he her only brother, and no harm in him, only a bit of foolishness.
Marg said no more. But she knew well that once the money was gone, it was gone for good and all; they need never hope to get so far before the world again. And she would never marry into the Ratigans unless she could bring money with her, to have them passing remarks about her and her people.