“Throth, Phil, I never like to go next or near sich women or sich places, but for the sake o’ the innocent we must forget the guilty. So push an, avick, push an. Who knows but it’s life an’ death wid us? Have you ne’er a spur on?”
“The divil a spur I tuck time to wait for.”
“Well, afther all, it’s not right to let a messager come for a woman like me, widout what is called the Midwife’s Spur—a spur in the head—for it has long been said that one in the head is worth two in the heel, an’ so indeed it is,—on business like this, any way.”
“Mrs Moan, do you know the Moriartys of Ballaghmore, ma’am?”
“Which o’ them, honey?”
“Mick o’ the Esker Beg.”
“To be sure I do. A well-favoured dacent family they are, an’ full o’ the world too, the Lord spare it to them.”
“Bedad, they are, ma’am, a well-favoured[1] family. Well, ma’am, isn’t it odd, but somehow there’s neither man, woman, nor child in the parish but gives you the good word above all the women in it; but as for a midwife, why, I heard my aunt say that if ever mother an’ child owended their lives to another, she did her and the babby’s to you.”
The reader may here perceive that Phil’s flattery must have had some peculiar design in it, in connection with the Moriartys, and such indeed was the fact. But we had better allow him to explain matters himself.
“Well, honey, sure that was but my duty; but God be praised for all, for every thing depinds on the Man above. She should call in one o’ those newfangled women who take out their Dispatches from the Lying-in College in Dublin below; for you see, Phil, there is sich a place there—an’ it stands to raison that there should be a Fondlin’ Hospital beside it, which there is too, they say; but, honey, what are these poor ignorant cratures but new lights, every one o’ them, that a dacent woman’s life isn’t safe wid?”