“I’ll bet that not one of ye knows who’s comin’ to join us at Derry,” said Micky’s Jim, tiring of his play and putting the bottle back in his pocket, after having taken a sup of its contents.
“Who?” asked several voices.
“Dermod Flynn from Glenmornan.”
“I haven’t seen that gasair for the last two years or more,” said Murtagh Gallagher, a young man of twenty-five, who came from the townland of Meenahalla in the parish of Frosses. “If I mind right, he was sort of soft in the head.”
A faint blush rose to Norah Ryan’s cheek, and though she still looked out of the window she now failed to see the objects flying past. The conversation had suddenly become very interesting for her.
“He has been working with a farmer beyont the mountains this long while,” said Micky’s Jim. “But I’m keepin’ a place for him in the squad, and ye’ll see him on the Glasgow boat this very night. Ye have said that he was soft in his head, Murtagh Gallagher. Well, that remark applies to me.”
Jim spat on his hands, rose to his feet, shoved his fist under Murtagh’s nose and cried: “Smell that! There’s the smell of dead men off that fist! Dermod Flynn soft in the head, indeed! I’ll soft ye, ye—ye flat-nosed flea-catcher ye!”
“I was only making fun,” said Murtagh.
“Make it to his face then!”
“D’ye mind how Dermod Flynn knocked Master Diver down with his fist in the very school?” asked Judy Farrel, who was also one of the party.