“Whoop!” says Tony Braddigin—that was the postboy’s name—“Isn’t it eligint, Shemus, jewel?” says he. In troth, there never was anything better managed; for we heard afterwards that not a mortal saw anything that passed, but an ould Charley,—an’ as the Carneys ran past him—they were, ye know, Biddy Donovan’s cousins, by the mother’s side—one of them gave him the fist; an’, for a fortnight afterwards, he couldn’t tell light from darkness.
“Well, by this time we were clear of the town, and it was nearly twilight. I turned round now that we were safe, to see how matters were gettin’ on within, and if Dick was makin’ love to her. Well, I put the question to him in Irish, and he answered in the same:
“De ye think,” says he, “I’m not workin’ for the best—but wheniver, to make lier asy, I tell her we’ll marry out of the face, by Jakers! she kicks the harder.”
“Sorra soul’s within bearin’,” says I—“so take the handkerchief out of her mouth and give her air—for maybe she’s chokin’—and that’s what makes her kick.”
He did what I bid him—and, Lord! what a tongue she had when she got the use of it!—and not a word for ather of us but thief and villain. I disremember how she swore; but if she had been born in Connaught, the oaths couldn’t have come asier.
“Ye etarnal robbers!” says she, “what do ye want? I have no money about me, and I suppose I’m to be murdered!”
“We want nothing in the world,” says Dick, “but to make ye an honest woman manin’, of course, to marry her lawfully.
“Make me an honest woman!—why, ye common thieves, what do ye mane?”
Dick made a kind of a confused story of it, but she didn’t wait to the end. “Oh, murder! murder!” she called out—“Marry me! and get me transported?”
“Transported?” says Dick.