With this he generally prefaces his remarks. It is, however, merely rhetorical. He does not expect an answer; unless one were at least a minor prophet it would be impossible to give one, except in the negative. “Do ye know what I’m goin’ te tell ye?” he repeated, gently, raising a weed with his hoe into what looked like a sitting position, where he held it as if he were supporting it in bed to receive its last communion. “There’s not a hair’s differ betwixt onny two weemen.” I was speechless, and he continued: “There is thon boy o’ mine, and though I say it that shouldn’t, he’s a fine boy, so he is, and no ways blate, and as brave a boy as you’d wish for te see. From the time he was six year old he was that old-fashioned he wouldn’t go to church without his boots was right jergers (creakers) that ye’d hear all over the church when he cum in a wee bit late: and he cud say off all the responses as bowld as brass. Did I no’ learn him his releegion mesel, and bid him foller after him that has gone before?”
A solemn pause seemed only appropriate here, though I had my doubts.
“But whiles he tuk te colloque-in’ with the wee fellers round the corner there in Irish street. That’s so. But I soon quet him o’ that. Says I te him: ‘Do ye know what I’m goin’ te tell ye? Me heart’s broke with ye, so it is. I’ll have no colloque-in’ from onny boy o’ mine, so I won’t. Ye’ll have no traffickin’, no, nor passin’ o’ the time o’ day with them that’s not yer own sort, and that differs from the Reverend Crampsey; him and me and Johnston of Ballykilbeg, and the Great Example. What’s that ye say? Who is the Great Example? Now! Now! Who wud it be, but him on the white horse?’”
This is not, as might be supposed, from the vision of the Apocalypse, but is easily recognised by those who are in the know, as an allusion to William of Orange, of “Glorious, pious, and immortal memory,” who is always represented on a white horse.
“But,” I argued, “he did traffic with those who disagreed with him; it is even said, you know, that when he came to England he subsidised the Pope.”
Tummus appeared not to have heard this remark.
“As I was sayin’, thon boy o’ mine, he has a mind to get hisself marriet. So says I te him, ‘There’s not a hair’s differ between onny two o’ them.’ Ye see, it’s this way. He has the two o’ them courted down to the askin’, and he’s afeard that if he asks the wan he’ll think long for the other, or maybe he’ll think he’d sooner have had the other.”
“He is not behaving well. He can’t, of course, marry them both, and yet he has raised hopes which must in one case be disappointed; he might break the poor girl’s heart.”
“Break her heart! Hoot. Blethers. Heart is it?”
“But,” I interjected again, merely, of course, to make conversation, for I have many times and oft heard his opinion on the subject, and it is not favourable, “Don’t you believe in love?”