“You’re burnin’ the toast, an’ goin’ to make snuff of Father Maher’s break’ast,” interrupted Paddy. “At the rate you’re goin’ on, you’ll bile the eggs that hard that you’ll kill his riverence, and be thried for murdher. And, upon my soukins, the hangman will have a nate job with you.”
“You’d slip thro’ the rope, you flax-hank,” was the answer. “Wait till I put my two eyes on Katty Tyrrell, and, troth, I’ll put your nose out o’ joint, or my name isn’t Mary Galvin. You goin’ coortin’! The Lord save and guide us! As if any wan would dhrame of taking a switch for a husband—a crathur like you, only fit to beat an ould coat with!”
“Don’t lose your timper, Mrs. Galvin,” said Paddy, whose inextinguishable love of fun gleamed out of his black eyes, and flashed from his dazzlingly white and regular teeth. “God is good; all the ould fools isn’t dead yet, and there’s a chance of your not dying without some unforchinate gandher saying the Rosary in thanks for his redimption.”
Mrs. Galvin made no reply. She placed the toast in the rack in silence; but that silence was ominous. Next, she removed the teapot, cosy and all, from the fireside, and placed all on a tray, which she bore off with a sort of conscious yet sullen dignity, to the pretty parlour, where Father Maher, after his hard mountain ride, waited breakfast.
“I’ll never spake to Paddy Fret again, your riverence,” she said, when everything had been arranged, and it was her turn to quit the room.
The priest, like the majority of his Irish brethren—God bless them!—had a ready appreciation of a joke. He paused in the task of shelling an egg, and inquired with all possible gravity, “What is the matter now, Mrs. Galvin?”
“Sure, your riverence, my heart is bruk with the goin’s on of Paddy Fret. From mornin’ till night he’s never done makin’ faces at me, an’ sayin’ as how no wan in Croagh would think of throwin’ a stick at me. Ah! then, I can tell you, Father Michael, I squez the heart’s blood out of many as fine a man, in my time, as iver bid the divil good night, savin’ your riverence.”
“You are in the autumn of your beauty yet, Mary,” said the priest, “handsome is that handsome does, you know.”
“Thank you kindly, Father Maher. But that boy’ll be the death o’ me. And then,” putting her sharp knuckles on the table’s edge, and bending over to her master, in deep confidence, “I know for sartin that he’s runnin’ after half the girls in the parish.”
Father Maher looked grave at this disclosure.