“Well, dear, there was a woman, an’ she was called away one night by a little gentleman dressed in green. I’ll tell you the story some time—only this, that havin’ done her duty, an’ tuck no payment, she was called out the same night to a neighbour’s wife, an’ a purtier boy you couldn’t see than she left behind her. But it seems she happened to touch one of his eyes wid a hand that had a taste of their panado an it; an’ as the child grew up, every one wondhered to hear him speak of the multitudes o’ thim that he seen in all directions. Well, my dear, he kept never sayin’ anything to them until one day when he was in the fair of Ballycomaisy, that he saw them whippin’ away meal and cotton and butther, an’ everything that they thought serviceable to them; so you see he could hould in no longer, an’ says he to a little fellow that was very active an’ thievish among them, ‘Why duv you take what doesn’t belong to you?’ says he. The little fellow looked up at him”—“God be about us, Rose, what is that white thing goin’ along the ditch to the left of us?”
“It’s a sheep, don’t you see? Faix, I believe you’re cowardly at night.”
“Ay, faix, an’ so it is, but it looked very quare somehow.”
“—An’ says he, ‘How do you know that?’ ‘Bekase I see you all,’ says the other. ‘An’ which eye do you see us all wid?’ says he again. ‘Why, wid the left,’ says the boy. Wid that he gave a short whiff of a blast up into the eye, an’ from that day not a stime the poor boy was never able to see wid it. No, Phil, I didn’t say it was myself—I named nobody.”
“An’, Mrs Moan, is it thrue that you can put the dughaughs upon them that trate their wives badly?”
“Whisht, Phil. When you marry, keep your timper—that’s all.—You knew long Ned Donnelly?”
“Ay, bedad, sure enough; there was quare things said about”——“Push an, avick, push an; for who knows how some of us is wanted? You have a good masther, I believe, Phil? It’s poison the same Ned would give me if he could. Push an, dear.”
Phil felt that he had got his answer. The abrupt mystery of her manner and her curt allusions left him little indeed to guess at. In this way did the conversation continue, Phil feloniously filching, as he thought, from her own lips, a corroboration of the various knowledge and extraordinary powers which she was believed to possess, and she ingeniously feeding his credulity, merely by enigmatical hints and masked allusions; for although she took care to affirm nothing directly or personally of herself, yet did she contrive to answer him in such a manner as to confirm every report that had gone abroad of the strange purposes she could effect.
“Phil, wasn’t there an uncle o’ yours up in the Mountain Bar that didn’t live happily for some time wid his wife?”
“I believe so, Rose; but it was before my time, or any way when I was only a young shaver.”