Norah indicated that there was hurry, and asked if there were another shop.
“There’s Mary Doody’s,” said the man of business, sadly; “at the least, you might call it a shop, though it’s only herself knows what she sells. That’s the only one.” He came to the doorway, and pointed down the street. “The last house, it is. If ’twas anything in the wurruld now, except pins, I’d have it.”
A little way from the shop, he caught them up, breathless, but aflame with business enterprise.
“Is it from Moroney’s ye are? Would ye tell Mrs. Moroney that I’ve the grandest bit of pork ever she seen—killed yesterday, an’ they me own pigs that I rared on the place. Peter Grogan—sure, she’ll know me.”
“Thank you,” Jim said, hurriedly. “Good night.”
“Good night,” responded Mr. Grogan. “Tell her to-morrow’s early closing day, an’ I could bring one over in the little ass-cart as aisy as not.” The last words were uttered in a high shriek as the distance widened between himself and the Linton party.
“Pork is a good thing,” said Mr. Linton, sententiously. “Isn’t it, Jim?”
“If you’d seen the room I saw!” said his son, with feeling. “Such a bedroom: and the gentleman in bed, and I should say very drunk. No, I don’t think I’ll deliver that message.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Linton.
Mary Doody’s place of business stood back a little from the road. There was no window for the display of goods, and the door was shut. The uninitiated might, indeed, have been pardoned for failing to regard it as a shop, or for passing by, unnoticed, the brief legend over the door which stated that Mrs. Doody’s residence was a Generil Store, and added that she was further empowered to sell stout and porter. The inhabitants of Gortbeg, however, were clearly to be numbered among the initiated, for sounds of conviviality came, muffled, from within, and once a voice broke into a snatch of a song. Norah hesitated.