“But it’s noways fair rules,” retorted Jerry; “father he flung down his weepon for to rub her knee when she hurt it herself wid the poker!”
Jerry had lost his bet, as indeed he usually did, but for all that he remained a consistent supporter of the losing side. Daily he acknowledged in his body the power of the arm of flesh, but the vagrant butterfly humour of the male parent with the dreamy blue eyes touched him where he lived—perhaps because his, like his mother’s, were sloe-black.
Nevertheless, in spite of mishandling and a scandalous disregard of the rules of the noble art of self-defence (not yet elaborated, but only roughly understood as “Fair play to all”), Boyd Connoway carried his point.
He saw the occupant of the bed “doon-the-hoose.”
He was a slim man with clean-cut features, very pale about the gills and waxen as to the nose. He lay on the bed, his head ghastly in its white bandages rocking from side to side and a stream of curses, thin and small of voice as a hill-brook in drought, but continuous as a mill-lade, issuing from between his clenched teeth.
These adjurations were in many tongues, and their low-toned variety indicated the swearing of an educated man.
Boyd understood at once that he had to do with no vulgar Tarry-Breeks, no sweepings of a couple of hemispheres, but with “a gentleman born.” And in Donegal, though they may rebel against their servitude and meet them foot by foot on the field or at the polling-booths, they know a gentleman when they see one, and never in their wildest moods deny his birthright.
Boyd, therefore, took just one glance, and then turning to his wife uttered his sentiment in three words of approval. “I’m wid ye!” he said.
Had it been Galligaskins or any seaman of the Golden Hind, Boyd would have had him out of the house in spite of his wife and all the wholesome domestic terror she had so long been establishing.
But a Donegal man is from the north after all, and does not easily take to the informer’s trade. Besides, this was a gentleman born.