“Sure, melady, he'll go to Galway for you, when oncet he's started wid himself; and it's only a couple o' fingers to the Castle, annyways.”
The four-mile drive, especially through the village of Ballyfuchsia, was an eventful one, but by dint of prodding, poking, and belting, Benella had accomplished half the distance in three-quarters of an hour, when the donkey suddenly lay down 'on her,' according to Peter's prediction. This was luckily at the town cross, where a group of idlers rendered hearty assistance. Willing as they were to succour a lady in disthress, they did not know of any car which could be secured in time to be of service, but one of them offered to walk and run by the side of the donkey, so as to kape him on his legs. It was in this wise that Miss Peabody approached Balkilly Castle; and when a gilded gentleman-in-waiting lifted her from Rooney's 'plain cart,' she was just on the verge of hysterics. Fortunately his Magnificence was English, and betrayed no surprise at the arrival in this humble fashion of a dinner guest, but simply summoned the Irish housekeeper, who revived her with wine, and called on all the saints to witness that she'd never heard of such a shameful thing, and such a disgrace to Ballyfuchsia. The idea of not keeping a ladder in a house where the door-knobs were apt to come off struck her as being the worst feature of the accident, though this unexpected and truly Milesian view of the matter had never occurred to us.
“Well, I got Miss Peabody to the dinner-party,” said Benella triumphantly, when she was laboriously unlacing my frock, later on, “or at least I got her there before it broke up. I had to walk every step o' the way home, and the donkey laid down four times, but I was so nerved up I didn't care a mite. I was bound Miss Peabody shouldn't lose her chance, after all she's done for me!”
“Her chance?” I asked, somewhat puzzled, for dinners, even Castle dinners, are not rare in Salemina's experience.
“Yes, her chance,” repeated Benella mysteriously; “you'd know well enough what I mean, if you'd ben born and brought up in Salem, Massachusetts!”
Copy of a letter read by Penelope O'Connor, descendant of the King of Connaught, at the dinner of Lord and Lady Killbally at Balkilly Castle. It needed no apology then, but in sending it to our American friends, we were obliged to explain that though the Irish peasants interlard their conversation with saints, angels, and devils, and use the name of the Virgin Mary, and even the Almighty, with, to our ears, undue familiarity and frequency, there is no profane or irreverent intent. They are instinctively religious, and it is only because they feel on terms of such friendly intimacy with the powers above that they speak of them so often.
At the Widdy Mullarkey's,
Knockarney House, Ballyfuchsia,
County Kerry.
Och! musha bedad, man alive, but it's a fine counthry over here, and it bangs all the jewel of a view we do be havin' from the windys, begorra! Knockarney House is in a wild, remoted place at the back of beyant, and faix we're as much alone as Robinson Crusoe on a dissolute island; but when we do be wishful to go to the town, sure there's ivery convaniency. There's ayther a bit of a jauntin' car wid a skewbald pony for drivin', or we can borry the loan of Dinnis Rooney's blind ass wid the plain cart, or we can just take a fut in a hand and leg it over the bog. Sure it's no great thing to go do, but only a taste of divarsion like, though it's three good Irish miles an' powerful hot weather, with niver a dhrop of wet these manny days. It's a great old spring we're havin' intirely; it has raison to be proud of itself, begob!
Paddy, the gossoon that drives the car (it's a gossoon we call him, but faix he stands five fut nine in his stockin's, when he wears anny)—Paddy, as I'm afther tellin' you, lives in a cabin down below the knockaun, a thrifle back of the road. There's a nate stack of turf fornint it, and a pitaty pot sets beside the doore, wid the hins and chuckens rachin' over into it like aigles tryin' to swally the smell.