"I do; but I also know that there's seldom smoke without fire, and that it sometimes makes a good hit. And sure, nothin's more reasonable than that it's right this time. Tom's a fine young fellow; an' like yourself, sure, he's an only child. There wasn't such a weddin' this hundred years—no, nor never—in the parish of Rathcash, as it will be—come now!"
"Tom is a fine young man, Kate; I don't deny it—"
"You couldn't—you couldn't, Winny Cavana! you'd belie yoursel' if you did," said Kate, with a little more warmth of manner than was quite politic under the circumstances.
"But I don't, Kate; and I can't see why you need fly at me in that way."
"I beg your pardon, Winny dear; but sure everybody sees an' knows that you're on for one another; an' why not?—wasn't he as cross as a bag of cats at his father's party because he let 'that whelp' (as he called him) Edward Lennon take you out for the first dance?"
"Emon-a-knock is no whelp; he couldn't call him a whelp. Did he call him one?"
"Didn't you hear him? for if you didn't you might; it wasn't but he spoke loud enough."
"It is well for him, Kate, that Emon did not hear him. He's as good a man as Tom Murdock at any rate. He didn't fall over the poker and tongs as Tom did."
"That was a mere accident, Winny. I seen the fung of his pump loose myself; didn't I help to shut it for him, afther he fell?"
"You were well employed indeed, Kate," said Winny sneeringly.