Tom Murdock was the least satisfied of them all with the whole business, and sullenly told his father, who had done it all to serve him, that "he had done more harm than good, and that he knew he would, by asking that whelp Lennon; and he hoped he might never die till he broke every bone in his body. By hook or by crook, by fair means or foul, he must put a stop to his hopes in that quarter."
His father was silent. He felt that he had not advanced matters by his party. Old Cavana was not the sharp old man in these matters, either to mind or divine from how many points the wind blew, and quietly supposed all had gone on smoothly, as he and old Murdock wished.
Winifred had been more than confirmed in her dislike to Tom Murdock, while her secret preference for Emon-a-knock had been in no respect diminished. She had depth enough also to perceive that Kate Mulvey was anxious enough to propitiate the good opinion, to which she had taken no pains to hide her indifference. She was aware that Kate Mulvey's name had been associated with young Lennon's by the village gossips, but she had seen nothing on that night to justify any apprehension, if she chose to set herself to work. She would take an opportunity of sounding her friend upon this momentous subject, and finding out how the land really lay. If that was the side of her head Kate's cap was inclined to lean to, might they not strike a quiet and confidential little bargain between them, as regarded these two young men?
Kate Mulvey's thoughts were not very much at variance with those of her friend Winny. She, not having the same penetration into the probable results of sinister looks and scowling brows; or not, perhaps, having ever perceived them, had thrown one of the nicest caps that ever came from a smoothing-iron at Tom Murdock, but she feared he had not yet picked it up. She was afraid, until the night of the party, that her friend and rival—yes, it is only in the higher ranks of society that the two cannot be united—had thrown a still more richly trimmed one at him; but on that night, and she had watched closely, she had formed a reasonable belief that her fear was totally unfounded. She was not quite sure that it had not been let drop in Emon-a-knock's way, if not actually thrown at him. These girls, in such cases, are so sharp!
The very same thought had struck her. She also had determined upon sounding her friend Winny, and would take the first favorable opportunity of having a confidential chat with her upon the subject. The girls were very intimate, and were not rivals, only they did not know it. We shall see by-and-by how they "sounded" each other.
Young Lennon's after-thoughts, upon the whole, were more satisfactory than perhaps those of any of the other principal persons concerned. If Winny Cavana had not shown him a decided preference over the general set of young men there, she had certainly been still less particular in her conduct and manner toward Tom Murdock. These matters, no doubt, are managed pretty much the same in all ranks of society, though, of course, not with the same refinement; and to young Lennon, whose heart was on the watch, as well as his eyes, one or two little incidents during the night gave him some faint hopes that, as yet at least, his rich rival had not made much way against him. Hitherto, young Lennon had looked upon the rich heiress of Rathcash as a fruit too high for him to reach from the low ground upon which he stood, and had given more of his attention to her poorer neighbor Kate Mulvey. He, however, met with decided reluctance in that quarter, and being neither cowardly, ignorant, nor shy, he had improved one or two favorable occasions with Winny Cavana at the party, whom he now had some, perhaps delusive, notion was not so far above his reach after all.
These are the only persons with whose after-thoughts we are concerned. There may have been some other by-play on the part of two or three fine young men and handsome girls, who burned themselves upon the bar, and danced together after they became cinders, but as they are in no respect mixed up with our story, we may pass them by without investigating their thoughts, further than to declare that they were all well pleased, and that the praises of old Murdock's munificence rang from one end of the parish to the other.
CHAPTER IX.
I must now describe a portion of the garden which stretched out from the back of old Ned Cavana's premises. A large well-enclosed farmyard, almost immediately at the rear of the house, gave evidence of the comfort and plenty belonging not only to the old man himself, but to everything living and dead about the place; and as we shall be obliged to pass through this farm-yard to get into the garden, we may as well describe it first. Stacks of corn, wheat, oats, and barley, in great variety of size, pointed the pinnacles of their finishing touch to the sky. Sticking up from some of these were sham weather-cocks, made of straw, in the shape of fish, fowl, dogs, and cats, the handiwork of Jamesy Doyle, the servant boy,—the same black-headed urchin who lifted the tenpenny-bit out of the tub at old Murdock's party. They were fastened upon sticks, which did not turn round, and were therefore put up more to frighten away the sparrows than for the purpose of indicating which way the wind blew, or, more likely still, as mere specimens of Jamesy Doyle's ingenuity. The whole yard was covered a foot deep with loose straw, for the double purpose of giving comfort to two or three litters of young pigs, and that of being used up, by the constant tramping, into manure for the farm; for cows, heifers, and calves strayed about it without interruption. A grand flock of geese, as white as snow and as large nearly as swans, marched in from the fields, headed by their gander, every evening about the same hour, to spend their night gaggling and watching and sleeping by turns under the stacks of corn, which were raised upon stone pillars with mushroom metal-caps, to keep out the rats and mice. A big black cock, with a hanging red comb and white jowls, and innumerable hens belonging to him, something on the Brigham Young system, marched triumphantly about, calling his favorites every now and then with a quick melancholy little chuckle as often as he found a tit-bit amongst the straw. Ducks, half as large as the geese, coming home without a feather raffled, in a mottled string of all colors, from the stream below the hill, diving, for variety, into the clean straw, emerging now and then, and smattering with their flat bills in any little puddle of water that lay between the pavement in the bare part of the yard. "Bullydhu," the watch-dog, as evening closed, taking possession of a small wooden house upon wheels,—Jamesy Doyle's handiwork too,—that it might be turned to the shelter, whichever way the wind blew. It was a miracle to see Bully getting into it, the door was so low; another piece of consideration of Jamesy's for the dog's comfort. You could only know when he was in it by seeing his large soft paws under the arch of the low door.
Beyond this farm-yard—farm in all its appearance and realities—was the garden. A thick, high, furze hedge, about sixty yards long, ran down one side of it, from the corner of the farmyard wall; and at the further end of this hedge, which was the square of the garden, and facing the sun, was certainly the most complete and beautiful summer-house in the parish of Rathcash, or Jamesy Doyle was very much mistaken. It also was his handiwork. In fact, there was nothing Jamesy could not turn his hands to, and his heart was as ready as his hands, so that he was always successful, but here he had outstripped all his former ingenuity. The bower was now of four years' standing, and every summer Jamesy was proud to see that nature had approved of his plan by endorsing it with a hundred different signatures. With the other portions of the garden or its several crops, we have nothing to do; we will therefore linger for a while about the furze hedge and in "Jamesy's bower" to see what may turn up. But I must describe another item in the locality.