While this magical song was thrilling on all hearts, Kate Kavanagh, the witching Kate! stood apart from the others, singing and laughing alternately, her reaping-hook resting on one arm, and dressed in the every-day fashion of the place—the striped linsey short petticoat, and loose bedgown or wrapper, a dress that would make an ordinary woman frightful, and straw hat, the leaf of which, turned up before and pinned to the crown, displayed her sable locks and fair high forehead to perfection. And many a side-glance the anxious father, Dennis Costigan, cast at this arrangement of Kate’s headgear, as he broadly hinted that “for sartin Miss Kavanagh’s complexion would be intirely spiled if she showed it too much to the sun.”
“Tut!” was Kate’s good-humoured reply, “‘the life ov an ould hat is to cock it,’ as we say in the counthry. The leaf ov it was flappin’ in my eyes; the lads couldn’t see me, nor I them, so a pin settled the bisness;” and nothing could become her fine Spanish face better, though her toilet was made in perfect carelessness, for dashing Kate had other charms to depend on besides beauty. Imprimus, she was the first dancer in the country, outdoing her dancing-master himself at “jigs, reels, thribbles, doubles, hornpipes, and petticoatees.” She was a killing dancer in both senses of the word, for no boy or girl could keep it up with the spirit of Kate Kavanagh, and she generally disabled six or eight prime beaus at every “hop” she appeared at, which was nearly every night. The worst of it was (as the sorely annoyed fathers and mothers of the neighbourhood said), “though she fairly kilt all the boys that danced with her, yet sorra one but herself would sarve them for a partner after all!” Then she was, as Orator Shiel said, “Apollyo in petticoats for singin’!” and songs of love, murder, hunting, war, and sea, would charm with double effect, borne on the musical notes of Kate Kavanagh. In short, she was “metal most,” but also too “attractive;” and loud complaints and grievances at last came thundering on her devoted head. “Boys growin’ lazy and crazy—work undone or done badly—time spent an’ mis-spent—messages forgotten and mistaken—girls neglected—matches broken—eternal dancin’, fightin’, black eyes an’ bloody noses”—all, all was laid in a bundle at the door of handsome, animated, dashing, yet very innocent Kate Kavanagh.
“What will be done with her at all at all?” iterated the suffering fathers and mothers all round the country. “What will we do with her at all?”
“I’ll tell ye, naiburs,” responded one of the elders, as a body of them returned from chapel on the Sunday after Mosey Fortune’s great “flare up,” at which three topping bloods fought for the honour of first figuring on the floor with the “belle o’ the barony.” “Let a respectable dacent naibur, sitch as Dennis Costigan here for example, go to her father as a friend to advise him to get his daughther married out ov hand, for fear some harm will happen. An’, throth, harm will happen; for if she’s not the destruction ov herself, she will be the ruination ov others. So, Misther Costigan, let you be the man to spake to Miles Kavanagh.”
“Agreed,” said Dennis Costigan, who was one of the party, and also a suffering father; and on the ensuing Thursday he intended to proceed on the mission.
In the meantime, Kate Kavanagh, never dreaming of the grand hubbub about her, assisted to cut down Mr Costigan’s wheat; and so full of songs, jokes, and attractions was she, that it was observed, even by the farmer himself, that the men, old and young, surpassed themselves at reaping that day. Indeed, Kate set them an excellent pattern; for, notwithstanding that her tongue moved in double-quick time, she took care that her hands should be equally nimble; and at nightfall, thanks to Kate and the influence of her black eyes, sharp and bright as her sickle, the very large field of wheat was cut down, bound, and stooked to the owner’s satisfaction. Yet, after all, the “flower of Forth” bloomed too near Dennis, or rather his sons, to allow him to be perfectly content.
“How yer father squints at me!” observed Kate to James Costigan, her ardent admirer, and to whom, by the way, she contrived to keep close during the day. “He looks at me as if I was a crab apple, an’ he had just taken a bite. Wouldn’t it be the best ov a good joke, now, if I’d make him change his tune in spite ov himself?”
Jem looked at her very tenderly as he replied, “Ye do as you like with us, Kate darlin’, but I doubt yer power over my father. He is flent to purty girls, an’ above all to you.”
“We shall see,” said Kate; and that very evening, between coaxing and pulling, she actually brought the portly farmer, albeit in no dancing mood, to dance with her (when Peter Hamilton and his violin happened in after supper), to the amazement and amusement of a kitchen full of spectators, though, as honest Dennis confessed while wiping his broad brows, “he didn’t take sitch a spree for ten years afore!” Handsome Kate at the end of it looked knowingly at Jem Costigan, as much as to say, “You see this, and you’ll see more.”
The next morning an express arrived to Dennis Costigan with the news that his sister’s daughter, Miss Peggy Malone, was about to “change her state,” and that her uncle’s company was required at the wedding.