"Funny?"
"Aye, the way things go. I wonder what sort of a child I'd a' had if I'd married you!"
"I really don't know!... I'm afraid I must go now!"
"Well, good-bye, Henry! I'll mebbe see you again some time!"
She held out her hand to him and he took it, and then dropped it quickly.
"Yes, perhaps," he answered, and added, "Good-bye!"
He went off quickly, not looking back until he had reached the foot of the "loanie," and then he stood for a second or two to watch her. She was busy with her baby again. He could see her white breast shining in the sunlight, and her head bent over the sucking child.
"Well, I'm damned," he said to himself, as he hurried off.
And as he hurried home, his mind set on quitting Ballymartin as speedily as possible, he remembered the casual way in which she had spoken of their possibly meeting again. "I'll mebbe see you some time!" she had said. So indifferent to him as that, she was, so happy in her love for her husband whom he remembered as a great big, hairy, tanned man who beat hot iron with heavy hammers and bent it into wheels and shoes for horses.
"She takes more interest in that putty-faced brat of hers than she does in me," he said to himself, angrily, and then, so swift were his changes of mood, he began to laugh. "Of course, she does," he said aloud. "Why shouldn't she? It's hers, isn't it?"