After the “sweet sorrow” of parting with the cantatrice, the fosterer and his companion, as if striving to leave care behind, pushed forward vigorously on the road; and at sunset, the steeple of the village where they had determined to remain for the night, was visible from the high ground they were crossing. Never were fellow-travellers in more opposite moods; Mark Antony, melancholy as “a lover’s lute”—the ratcatcher,
“Brisk as a bee, light as a fairy.”
And yet the matter might have been easily accounted for—the one had parted with a mistress—no wonder, therefore, that he, poor fellow, was sad enough; the other was levanting from a wife—consequently he was merry, “and small blame to him,” as they say in Ireland.
“Well, upon my conscience, Mark, astore,” * said Shemus Rhua, breaking a silence of five minutes, “ye’re a pleasant companion this evening, if a man didn’t care what he said.”
* Anglice—darling.
The fosterer answered with a sigh.
“Why,” continued the ratcatcher, “were you married, like myself, you couldn’t be much more miserable. Arrah! what the plague has come over ye, man? Can’t ye take things asy like me? Hav’n’t I left an affectionate wife behind?—and ye see I bear it like a Christian. I was once in love myself, and, as the sergeant’s song goes, found nothing for it but whisky. So, there’s a bridge, and here’s the cruiskeeine; we’ll sit down upon the wall for a while, take a drop to kill grief, and just inquire afterwards, where the devil we are going to.”
As he spoke, the worthy captain unclosed his goat-skin knapsack—produced a flask and capacious drinking-cup, supplied the latter sparingly from the stream, completing it amply from the cruiskeeine—and after swallowing the larger moiety himself, he transferred “love’s panacea” to his desponding comrade.
“That’s the thing,” exclaimed Shemus Rhua, as the fosterer emptied the horn; “and now, Mr. O’Toole, will you tell me where I’m bound for?”
“Upon my soul,” returned the fosterer, “I don’t know where I’m going to myself—nor do I care.”