From her visit to Warrenpoint, however, she returned home in high good humour, and ran gaily upstairs to remove her flowery hat, announcing that she would do some fried eggs, Hugh’s favourite dish, for their tea. Hence, he was all the more disconcerted when, as he followed her along the little passage, she suddenly wheeled round upon him, and confronted him with a countenance full of wrath. She had merely been looking for a moment out of the small end window, and why, in the name of fortune, marvelled Hugh, should that have put her in one of her tantrums? But it evidently had done so. “Saw you ever the like of that?” she demanded furiously, pointing through the window.
“The like of what at all?” said Hugh.
“Look at it,” said Mrs. Hugh, and drummed with the point of her umbrella on a pane.
Hugh looked, and saw, conspicuous at a short distance beyond their backyard, a portly rick of straw, which their neighbour, Peter Quin, had nearly finished building. A youth was tumbling himself about on top of it with much agility, and shouting “Pull!” at each floundering fall. “Sure,” said Hugh, “it’s nothing, only young Jim Quin leppin’ their rick.”
“I wisht he’d break every bone in his ugly body, then, while he’s at it,” declared Mrs. Hugh.
“It’s a quare wish to be wishin’ agin the poor, decent lad,” said her husband, “and he lepping plenty of ricks for ourselves before now.”
“And what call have they to be cocking up e’er a one there,” said Mrs. Hugh, “where there was never such a thing seen till this day?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” said Hugh. “It’s a handy place enough for a one, I should say, there on the bit of a headland.”
“How handy it is!” said his wife, “and it shutting out the gap in the fence on me that was the only glimpse I had into our lane.”
“Well, supposing it does, where’s the odds?” said Hugh. “There’s ne’er a much in the lane for anybody to be glimpsing at.”