“Yes, me jewel,” continued the subtle suitor, “I’m poor to-day, perhaps, but there’s noble blood coursin’ thro’ my veins. Go up to the top of Knock-meil-Down some fine mornin’, and look down all around you. There isn’t a square fut o’ grass in all you see that didn’t wanst belong to my ancisthors. In the time of Cahul Mohr wan o’ my grandfathers had tin thousand min and a hundherd thousand sheep at his command, not to spake of ships at say and forthresses and palaces on land.”
“Arrah, how did you get robbed, Paddy?” said Katty.
“Well, you see, my dear, they were a hard-dhrinkin’ lot at the time I’m spakin’ of. The landed property wint into the Incumbered Estates Coort, and was sould for a song; the forthresses were changed into Martello towers, and the army took shippin’ for France, but they were wracked somewhere in the South Says, where they all swam ashore and turned New Zealandhers.”
Katty was profoundly interested by this historical sketch of the Fret family, which Paddy rolled out without hitch or pause—indispensable elements of veracity in a spoken narrative. She allowed her lover to hold her hand, and fancied she was a princess.
As they sat in this delightful abstraction—the ecstasy known to the moderns as “spooning”—they were startled by the sound of wheels in the farmyard, and Katty, with one swift glance at the window, exclaimed in the wildest anguish, “Oh, Paddy, Paddy, what’ll become o’ me? Here’s my father and mother come back from market already.”
“Take it aisy, darlint,” replied Mr. Fret. “Can’t I hide in the bedroom beyant?”
“Not for all the world!” said Katty, in terror. “Oh, dear! oh, dear!”
“Thin stick me in the pot and put the lid over me,” was Mr. Fret’s next happy suggestion.
Katty glanced in agony round the kitchen, and suddenly a great hope filled her to the lips. Over the fireplace was a rude platform—common to Irish farmhouses—on which saddles, harness, empty sacks, old ropes, boots, and sometimes wool, were stored away indiscriminately.
“Up there—up with you,” she cried, placing a chair for him to ascend.