“You're betther than you desarve to be!”
To this, Sheelah made no further reply; on the contrary, she sat smoking her pipe with a significant silence, that was only broken by an occasional groan, an ejaculation, or a singularly devout upturning of the eyes to heaven, accompanied by a shake of the head, at once condemnatory and philosophical; indicative of her dissent from what he said, as well as of her patience in bearing it.
Larry, however, usually proceeded to combat all her gestures by viva voce argument; for every shake of her head he had an appropriate answer: but without being able to move her from the obstinate silence she maintained. Having thus the field to himself, and feeling rather annoyed by the want of an antagonist, he argued on in the same form of dispute, whilst she, after first calming her own spirit by the composing effects of the pipe, usually cut him short with—
“Here, take a blast o' this, maybe it'll settle you.”
This was received in silence. The good man smoked on, and every puff appeared, as an evaporation of his anger. In due time he was as placid as herself, drew his breath in a grave composed manner, laid his pipe quietly on the hob, and went about his business as if nothing had occurred between them.
These bickerings were strictly private, with the exception of some disclosures made to Sheelah's mother and sisters. Even these were thrown out rather as insinuations that all was not right, than as direct assertions that they lived unhappily. Before strangers they were perfect turtles.
Larry, according to the notices of his life furnished by Sheelah, was “as good a husband as ever broke the world's bread;” and Sheelah “was as good a poor man's wife as ever threw a gown over her shoulders.” Notwithstanding all this caution, their little quarrels took wind; their unhappiness became known. Larry, in consequence of a failing he had, was the cause of this. He happened to be one of those men who can conceal nothing when in a state of intoxication. Whenever he indulged in liquor too freely, the veil which discretion had drawn over their recriminations was put aside, and a dolorous history of their weaknesses, doubts, hopes, and wishes, most unscrupulously given to every person on whom the complainant could fasten. When sober, he had no recollection of this, so that many a conversation of cross-purposes took place between him and his neighbors, with reference to the state of his own domestic inquietude, and their want of children.
One day a poor mendicant came in at dinner hour, and stood as if to solicit alms. It is customary in Ireland, when any person of that description appears during meal times, to make him wait until the meal is over, after which he is supplied with the fragments. No sooner had the boccagh—as a certain class of beggars is termed—advanced past the jamb, than he was desired to sit until the dinner should be concluded. In the mean time, with the tact of an adept in his calling, he began to ingratiate himself with Larry and his wife; and after sounding the simple couple upon their private history, he discovered that want of children was the occasion of their unhappiness.
“Well good people,” said the pilgrim, after listening to a dismal story on the subject, “don't be cast down, sure, whether or not. There's a Holy Well that I can direct yez to in the county—. Any one, wid trust in the Saint that's over it, who'll make a pilgrimage to it on the Patthern day, won't be the worse for it. When you go there,” he added, “jist turn to a Lucky Stone that's at the side of the well, say a Rosary before it, and at the end of every dicken (decade) kiss it once, ache of you. Then you're to go round the well nine times, upon your bare knees, sayin' your Pathers and Avers all the time. When that's over, lave a ribbon or a bit of your dress behind you, or somethin' by way of an offerin', thin go into a tent an' refresh yourselves, an' for that matther, take a dance or two; come home, live happily, an' trust to the holy saint for the rest.”
A gleam of newly awakened hope might be discovered lurking in the eyes of this simple pair, who felt that natural yearning of the, heart incident to such as are without offspring.