“When you go home, never mind if your wife is angry, but be quiet yourself, and make her sweep the room clean, set the table out right and spread a clean cloth over it; then put the bottle on the ground saying these words: ‘Bottle, do your duty,’ and you will see the end of it.”
“And is this all?” says Mick.
“No more,” said the stranger. “Good-bye, Mick Purcell—you are a rich man.”
“God grant it!” said Mick, as the old man moved after the cow, and Mick retraced the road towards his cabin; but he could not help turning back his head, to look after the purchaser of his cow, who was nowhere to be seen.
“Lord between us and harm!” said Mick. “He can’t belong to this earth; but where is the cow?” She, too, was gone, and Mick went homeward muttering prayers, and holding fast the bottle.
“And what would I do if it broke?” thought he. “Oh! but I’ll take care of that.” So he put it into his bosom, and went on anxious to prove his bottle, and doubting of the reception he should meet from his wife. Balancing his anxieties with his expectation, his fears with his hopes, he reached home in the evening and surprised his wife, sitting over the turf fire in the big chimney.
“Oh! Mick, are you come back? Sure you weren’t at Cork all the way! What has happened to you? Where is the cow? Did you sell her? How much money did you get for her? What news have you? Tell us everything about it.”
“Why then, Molly, if you’ll give me time, I’ll tell you all about it. If you want to know where the cow is, ’tisn’t Mick can tell you, for the never a know does he know where she is now.”
“Oh! then, you sold her; and where’s the money?”
“Arrah, stop awhile, Molly, and I’ll tell you all about it.”