THEY should be home, Murty,” said David Linton.
“They shud,” said Mr. O’Toole, with conviction. He removed an exceedingly black pipe from his mouth and stared at it, pressing the tobacco down in the bowl with a broad thumb. “Will I be saddlin’ up a horse, do ye think, an’ takin’ afther them?”
“Not a bit of good,” said the squatter. “They may come home by any of three or four roads. I’d go myself if I were sure.” He knitted his brow, staring down the twilit track. “I don’t understand it—Mr. Jim is never late.”
“Sure, they’re young,” said Murty, and propped his long form comfortably against a tree. “Ye can’t never be tellin’ what the young’ll be afther whin they gets out wid a loose leg, like. An’ Mr. Jim’s level-headed enough. I wud not be worryin’.”
“Mr. Jim should know better than to be away so late,” said Jim’s father, sharply. “It’s nearly nine o’clock—and they should have been in for dinner at half-past six. Wonder do they think a woman has nothing to do but keep dinner hot for them! At any rate, I’ve told Mrs. Brown she’s not to keep anything. They can manage with bread and cheese if they can’t be in in decent time!”
“Niver did I see the ould man in such a tear!” confided Murty, a little later, to Mrs. Brown—who, in flagrant defiance of instructions, was brooding over preparations for a large and satisfactory supper for the absentees. “Him that aisy-goin’ as a rule, an’ niver lettin’ a cross word out of him—an’ he’s walkin’ up an’ down like a caged elephint, fairly rampin’. ’Tis anxious he is—that’s the throuble.”
“Well may he be,” said Mrs. Brown, tearfully. “That new pony of Miss Norah’s is that flighty and excitable—an’ he’s big an’ strong, too, an’ I know for two pins he’d buck! See him when they went off this mornin’—fit to jump out of his skin, an’ dancin’ little jigs all the way down the track. It’s enough to make anybody anxious.”
“P——f!” said Murty, with great scorn. “Miss Norah can manage Bosun as aisy as shellin’ peas. There’s no vice in him, nayther; he’s as kind a pony as iver I throwed a leg over. Ye’d not have the little misthress ridin’ an old crock?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said poor Brownie. “I never could make meself feel ’eroic where Miss Norah’s concerned. All very well to be proud of her ridin’ an’ all that—an’ you men are fair foolish over that sort of thing—but give me the contented mind as is a continual feast! An’ I would feel contenteder if she rode something a little less like a jumpin’-jack than Bosun.”
“That pony do be suitin’ Miss Norah down to the ground,” averted Murty. “Sure, ’twas something to see her face whin she caught sight of him first; an’ she’s that proud of him already. I did not think anny pony would ever do as well for her as poor ould Bobs, but——”