When the dance was over, Heffernan was ready to drop, puffing and blowing, and he staggered over to where Dark Moll was sitting, playing her fiddle, with Margaret close beside her. Up she jumped at sight of Mickey, to leave a seat empty for the poor old fellow; and the way he would not be thinking that she did that on purpose, she said, “Now that’s over, we may as well be getting ready another round of tay; dancing is drouthy work!”
So she went over to the hearth, to take up the teapot out of the ashes where she was keeping it warm; and Dan Grennan was standing there, and talking about all the sights and queer ways he met in America.
“And who should I bob up against, only last winter,” he went on, “but a near neighbour of our own here ... one of the Ratigans ... yous remember Patsy?”
At that word, Margaret turned very white, and she stooped down, as if she wanted to rake the ashes together. And said some one, “How is Patsy doing out there? Has he anny intentions of coming home for a wife, like yourself?”
“Och, the divil an intention!” said Dan; “sure, isn’t he well settled in there already? He’s marrit this len’th of time; to a widdy woman with a fine shop and a family too....”
Marg raised herself up then, and her face was blazing, and her eyes like coals of fire. But she said nothing; only went back, quiet and easy, to the corner where she had been sitting, and began by offering the first of the tea to Heffernan. And when he had it taken, he looked up at Marg, very gratefully.
“That’s good!” he said; “that’s the way I like tay! hot and sweet, and that strong, you could raddle lambs with it!”
Truth to tell, there was no scarcity nor meanness of any kind at that wedding; Dark Moll found it hard to carry away her share of what was left over, when every one had had enough.
In spite of what she got, and the good treatment she met with, she was discontented in her own mind. For do what she would, she could not get Margaret into discourse with the boy she had laid out for her. But Moll was as steadfast as a weasel to any plan that ever she formed.
It might have been a month or more after the wedding at the Dempseys’, that Mickey Heffernan was outside in front of his house, sitting on the bit of old wall, because the height of it just favoured the game leg, and enabled him to rest himself without having to stoop. He was feeling lonesome, and looking as forgotten as a hen without a tail. Small blame to him, if he did feel down in the mouth! after the trick that was played on him, and that lost him the fine young wife he thought to bring home to the Furry Farm. And then, to make it worse, to see how simply little Barney Maguire could get a woman! and one that seemed suitable every way you looked at it.