“No, avich machree, it isn’t; but, sure, can’t you wait an’ ax Peggy.”
“Is it because there’s any thing against me?” continued he, without heeding this reference to the mother of his fair one—“Is it because there’s any thing against me, I say, now or evermore, in the shape of warrant, or summons, or bad word, or any thing of the kind?”
“Och, forrear, forrear!” answered poor Brian, “but can’t you ax Peggy!” and he clasped his hands again and again with bitterness, for the young man’s interest had been, from long and constant habit, so interwoven in his mind with those of his darling Meny, that he was utterly unable to check the burst of agony which the question had excited. The old man’s evident grief and evasion of the question were not lost upon his companion.
“I’m belied—I know I am—I have it all now,” shouted he, utterly losing all command of himself. “Come, Brian Moran, this is no child’s play—tell me at once who dared to spake one word against me, an’ if I don’t drive the lie down his throat, be it man, woman, or child, I’m willing to lose her and every thing else I care for!”
“No, then,” answered Brian, “the never a one said a word against you—you never left it in their power, avich; an’ that’s what’s breaking my heart. Millia murther, it’s all Peggy’s own doings.”
“What!” he replied—“I’ll be bound Peggy had a bad dhrame about the match. Arrah, out with it, an’ let us hear what Peggy the Pishogue has to say for herself—out with it, man; I’m asthray for something to laugh at.”
“Oh, whisht, whisht—don’t talk that way of Peggy any how,” exclaimed Brian, offended by this imputation on the unerring wisdom of his helpmate. “Whatever she says, doesn’t it come to pass? Didn’t it rain on Saturday last, fine as the day looked? Didn’t Tim Higgins’s cow die? Wasn’t Judy Carney married to Tom Knox afther all? Ay, an’ as sure as your name is Mickey Brennan, what she says will come true of yourself too. Forrear, forrear! that the like should befall one of your dacint kin!”
“Why, what’s going to happen me?” inquired he, his voice trembling a little in spite of all his assumed carelessness: for contemptuously as he had alluded to the wisdom of his intended mother-in-law, it stood in too high repute not to create in him some dismay at the probability of his figuring unfavourably in any of her prognostications.
“Don’t ax me, don’t ax me,” was the sorrowing answer; “but take your haste out of the stable at once, and go straight to Father Coffey; and who knows but he might put you on some way to escape the bad luck that’s afore you.”
“Psha! fudge! ’pon my sowl it’s a shame for you, Brian Moran.”