“I could, indeed, Dermod,” said the old woman. “That wife of the bald-headed man is a fine soncy-lookin’ stump of a woman.”
“Is she better-lookin’ than Gourock Ellen?” asked Dermod with a laugh.
“Ye are droll, Dermod,” said Maire a Glan, nipping the boy’s thigh again. “D’ye know where Gourock Ellen slept last night? Under a cold bridge with the winds of heaven whistlin’ through the eye of it.”
“Could she not have gone into some house?”
“House, child? Ye are not in Ireland here!”
“When a poor man comes to our house at night, he always gets a bed till the mornin’,” said Norah Ryan, who was listening to the conversation. “And a bit and sup as well!”
“It’s only God and the poor who help the poor,” said the old woman. “And here’s the rain comin’ again, as the man said. It will be a bad day this to plough on our knees through the wet fields, bad luck be with them!”
III
A farmer with a bulbous nose and red whiskers met the squad on Rothesay pier. He wore a black jacket which, being too narrow round the shoulders, had split open half way down the back, a corduroy waistcoat, very tight trousers, patched at the knees and caked brown with clotted earth. This man was seated on the sideboard of a large waggon, removing the dirt from his clothes with a heavy, double-bladed clasp-knife.
“Good-day,” said Micky’s Jim, coming off the boat and stepping up to the man on the waggon.