As Jim fell to laughing again, Mrs. Connolly looked at him puzzled, and with some disapproval, though she would not express the latter sentiment to him in his invalided condition. But she soon afterwards took leave, and on her homeward way she said to herself, “Musha, good gracious, mightn’t one suppose Jim Hanlon ‘ud have more since than to go sind the poor imp of a child a prisint only for the sake of annoyin’ her? ’Twas the quare, foolish way to be spendin’ a sixpence, in my opinion. But sure, ’twas be way of a joke, an’ the poor man hasn’t much chance of e’er a one lyin’ there. It’s wonderful the store men set by nonsense. Sometimes you’d think they were all born fools, they do be that aisy amused. You’ll hear thim guffawin’ like a jackass bewitched over silly ould blathers that an infant child ‘ud have more wit than to be mindin’.”
Certainly, Jim was so well satisfied with his joke, if joke it were, that when he grew drowsy towards evening, his last thoughts made him chuckle contentedly. “The little black-leggy divils,” he said to himself. “Glory be to God! she’s finely.” And he fell asleep with a glad and grateful heart.
The Wise Woman.
From “A Boy in the Country.”
By John Stevenson.
That she knew far more than all the doctors put together was commonly considered, in the territory of her operations, as truth beyond question. Sometimes a man body, with a pain for which he could not account, fearing the inquisition and expense of the qualified practitioner, would make believe to doubt the potency of her medicines, the reality of her cures. But even the discernment of a boy was sufficient to detect the insincerity of his contemptuous talk about “auld wife’s doctorin’,” and to find lurking behind his brave words the strong desire to consult the wise woman. With much show of impatience, and pretence of anger, at the over-persuasion of his womankind, he would give a seemingly reluctant consent to see Mrs. Moloney, “if she should happen to look in.” He knew as well as that he lived that her coming would be by invitation.
Such a one, receiving in the field the message that “Mrs. Moloney’s in,” would probably say, “Hoots, nonsense,” and add that he had his work to look after. But, very soon, he would find that he needed a spade or a hook, a pot of paint, or a bit of rope, from home, and he must needs go home for it himself. He believed in a man’s doing a thing for himself if he wanted it well done; as like as not a messenger would spend half a day in looking for what he wanted, and bring the wrong thing in the end. At home he would make a fine show of searching out-houses and lofts, passing and repassing, with some noise, the kitchen windows, finally looking in to see if the thing is in the kitchen; and there, of course, quite accidentally, he would see Mrs. Moloney and would not be rude enough to leave without passing the time o’ day. Then the womankind took hold of the case, drew out the man’s story of distress, took notes of the remedy, and saw to it that the medicine was taken according to direction.
“The innards o’ man is tough, and need to be dealt with accordin’,” said Mrs. Moloney, and for man she prescribed a dose which gave him some pain and, usually, cured him. It may be that Nature, provoked by the irritant remedy, got rid of it, and the ailment at once; or it may be that the man body, after the racket in “his innards,” found his ailment, by comparison, easy to live with, and imagined himself cured. In either case, the result was counted as cure to the credit of Mrs. Moloney.