The father never spoke. I suppose he felt that there was nothing to be said. During one of these fits of coughing an evil-faced farmer who was looking for a female servant came around and asked the old man what wages did he want for his daughter.
"Five pounds," said the old man, and there was a tremble in his voice when he spoke.
"And maybe the cost of buryin' her," said the farmer with a white laugh as he passed on his way.
High noon had just passed when a youngish man, curiously old in appearance, stood in front of me. His shoulders were very broad, and one of them was far higher than the other. His waist was slender like a girl's, but his buttocks were heavy out of all proportion to his thin waist and slim slivers of shanks.
"Six pounds!" he repeated when I told him what wages I desired. "It's a big penny to give a wee man. I'll give ye a five-pound note for the six months and not one white sixpence more."
He struck me on the back while he spoke as if to test the strength of my spine, then ran his fingers over my shoulder and squeezed the thick of my arm so tightly that I almost roared in his face with the pain of it. After a long wrangle I wrung an offer of five pounds ten shillings for my wages and I was his for six months to come.
"Now gi' me your bundle and come along," he said.
I handed him my parcel of clothes and followed him through the streets, leaving the crowd of wrangling masters and obdurate boys fighting over final sixpences behind me. My master kept talking most of the time, and this was how he kept going on.
"What is yer name? Dermod Flynn? A Papist?—all Donegals are Papists. That doesn't matter to me, for if ye're a good willin' worker me and ye 'ill get on grand. I suppose ye'll have a big belly. It'll be hard to fill. Are ye hungry now? I suppose yer teeth will be growin' long with starvation, so I'll see if I can get ye anything to ate."
We turned up a little side street, passed under a low archway and went into an inn kitchen, where a young woman with a very red face was bending over a frying-pan on which she was turning many thick slices of bacon. The odour caused my stomach to feel empty.