“Wretched, wretched people!” said Lord Colambre.
“Then it’s not their fault, neither,” said Larry; “for my uncle’s one of them, and as thriving and hard a working man as could be in all Ireland, he was, afore he was tramped under foot, and his heart broke. I was at his funeral, this time last year; and for it, may the agent’s own heart, if he has any, burn in—”
Lord Colambre interrupted this denunciation by touching Larry’s shoulder, and asking some question, which, as Larry did not distinctly comprehend, he pulled up the reins, and the various noises of the vehicle stopped suddenly.
“I did not hear well, plase your honour.”
“What are those people?” pointing to a man and woman, curious figures, who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions: the woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this bundle the head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her hand and clung to her ragged petticoat; forming, all together, a complete group of beggars. The woman stopped, and looked after the man.
The man was a Spanish-looking figure, with gray hair; a wallet hung at the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand: he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him.
“A kind harvest to you, John Dolan,” cried the postilion, “and success to ye, Winny, with the quality. There’s a luck-penny for the child to begin with,” added he, throwing the child a penny. “Your honour, they’re only poor cratures going up the country to beg, while the man goes over to reap the harvest in England. Nor this would not be, neither, if the lord was in it to give ‘em employ. That man, now, was a good and willing slave in his day: I mind him working with myself in the shrubberies at Clonbrony Castle, when I was a boy—but I’ll not be detaining your honour, now the road’s better.”
The postilion drove on at a good rate for some time, till he came to a piece of the road freshly covered with broken stones, where he was obliged again to go slowly.
They overtook a string of cars, on which were piled up high, beds, tables, chairs, trunks, boxes, band-boxes.
“How are you, Finnucan? you’ve fine loading there—from Dublin, are you?”