AFTERWORD
I thought I had to have a better ending to the story than the scraps of things I had made over from Leerie’s letters and what Peter had told me. So I went to Hennessy.
It was midwinter. I found him cracking the ice on the pond to let the swans in for a cold bath.
“’Tis not docthor’s ordthers,” he grinned by way of explanation; “but they get so blitherin’ uneasy there’s no housin’ them. That’s the why I give them a bit of a cold nip onct the while—sure ’tis good threatment for us all—an’ then they settle down.”
I huddled deeper into a fur coat and tried to agree with Hennessy.
“Did ye see Leerie, then, since she came home?”
“Have you?”
He shirred his lips into an ecstatic pucker and whistled triumphantly. “Wasn’t I always sayin’ she’d marry the finest gentleman in the land, same as the King o’ Ireland’s only daughter, and go dandtherin’ off to a fine home of her own?”
“And she has.”
“She has that.”