Next morning M‘Carthy went to fish again, and he seen the lady coming and her six waiting maids walking behind her. He caught a splendid fine trout and brought it over to her; with that she turned home at once.
“Father,” says she, when she went in, “the gentleman is after giving me a fish which is bigger and better nor the one I brought back yesterday. If the like happens at the next time I go to the stream I will be inviting the noble person to partake of refreshment in this place.”
“Let you do as best pleases yourself,” says her father.
Well, sure enough, M‘Carthy got the biggest trout of all the third time. The lady was in the height of humour, and she asked would he go up to the house with her that day. She walked with M‘Carthy beside her, and the six waiting maids behind them. They conversed very pleasantly together, and at last he found courage for to tell her of how he travelled the world to seek no person less than herself.
“I’m fearing you’ll need to set out on a second journey, the way you will be coming in with some other one,” says she. “I have an old father who is after refusing two score of suitors who were asking me off him. I do be thinking I’ll not be joining the world at all, unless a king would be persuading himself of the advancement there is in having a son-in-law wearing a golden crown upon his head. The whole time it is great freedom I have, and I walking where it pleases me with six waiting maids along with me. The old man has a notion they’d inform him if I was up to any diversion, but that is not the way of it at all.”
“It is funning you are, surely,” says M‘Carthy. “If himself is that uneasy about you how would it be possible you’d bring me to the house to be speaking with him?”
“He is a kindly man and reasonable,” says she, “and it is a good reception you’ll be getting. Only let you not be speaking of marriage with me, for he cannot endure to hear tell of the like.”
Well, the old man made M‘Carthy welcome, and he had no suspicion the two were in notion of each other. But didn’t they arrange all unbeknownt to him, and plan out an elopement.
M‘Carthy went back to the Jew, and he told him all. “But,” says he, “I am after spending my whole great fortune of money travelling the territory of the world. I must be finding a good situation the way I’ll make suitable provision for herself.”
“Don’t be in the least distress,” says the Jew. “I did not befriend you this far to be leaving you in a bad case at the latter end. I’ll oblige you with the loan of what money will start you in a fine place. You will be making repayment at the end of three years when you have made your profit on the business.”