Just now—"Watch him, Sis!" he is on the look-out for wasp nests. Edam is the most wasp-free parish for miles, all owing to him. He marks them down in the daytime, and then in the evening he will come with his utensils and a dark lantern to make an end. With hung nests under eaves, or attached to branches of trees, he deals by drenching them with petroleum and setting a match to them. Sometimes he will drop a big one into a pail of water and stand ready to clap on the lid. The swarming deep-sunk nests in dry banks he attacks more warily. He brings a little apparatus for heating pitch, and pours it, liquid and sinuous, into the hole till the startled hum sinks into silence. Since an accident which happened last year (owing to the wasp-nest operated upon having a back-door) Butcher Donnan has always taken a quick-sighted boy or two to spy out the land. I suspect our Sir Toady has acted as scout pretty often. Do you remember when he came home all bulgy about the eyes and with one of his ears swelled up double? He said he thought he must have taken cold, and I saw from the twinkle in Fuz's eye that he thought he had been fighting. But I took my magnifying glass and got out two of the wasp-stings. Sir Toady had been doing "scout" for Butcher Donnan. He had not "scouted" quite quick enough—that was all.
Butcher Donnan, born Irish, had spent some time in America. So he started politics here, and as he hoists the green flag with a harp, and hauls down the Union Jack on the occasion of every Irish debate in Parliament, you may be sure that he gets his windows broken.
He does not object. He likes putting the panes in again himself, because it is something for him to do. Sometimes he catches some local Unionist patriot and (what he calls) "lathers" him! Afterwards he supports him liberally during a prolonged convalescence. It is counted rather a good thing to be loyal and get battered by that furious Irish Revolutionary, Butcher Donnan. He has illuminations, too, and has stood for the School Board and County Council on purely Fenian lines. He said nothing, however, when young Nipper was elected instead of him, on that most popular of all municipal tickets which consists in "keeping down the rates."
In despair of other employment Butcher Donnan has married a second time, and his wife is a buxom woman, overcome with the glory of living in a villa. But she makes regular first-class custards, I tell you. And for toffee and shortcake there is not the like of her in the whole village of Edam. If it were not for Butcher Donnan's (senior's) dignity, he might be a happy man. For Mrs. Donnan could conduct the finest confectioner's shop that ever was, and if the Butcher could be kept from cutting up a mince-pie with a cleaver, and sharpening a jelly-spoon on a "steel," he might be the best of salesmen and the happiest of men.
Meanwhile, he has found the big wasp-nest behind the Mains entrance gate, and he will be off to get his pitch-kettle ready, the mask for his face, and the gloves for his hands. He does not mean to suffer if he can help it.
His wife, who cannot be all the time in the kitchen, is miserable because she has to do fancy work and receive callers (or at least sit waiting for them) in the fruit season, which is a clear waste of time. She has been so long making a green Berlin wool cushion for a bazaar—the "Sons of Clan-na-Gael Mutual Assistance Sale"—that it is just chock-full of moths, and in time will pollute the entire household into which it is "raffled." It is wrong to raffle, anyway, says the chief of police, so it will serve them quite right—I shall not take a ticket. Now (said Hugh John, shaking his wise head) if they would only listen to me and start a confectioner's shop, they would both be chirpy as the day is long, and in the winter time long after dark—she over her dishes and patty-pans in the kitchen, and he in a white cap and apron behind the counter, talking to everybody, busy as honey-bees in clover-time, radiating sweetness and coining money.
And underneath the white apron Donnan could wear the butcher's "steel" if he liked, just to make him feel like himself.
Oh, I could arrange for people to be happy if they would only let me!
"And why don't you tell him?" I said to Hugh John, a little impatiently.
"Oh," said Hugh John, "you see, I have fought Nipper so long that there is a kind of hereditary household enmity."