“'It's a fashion, then,' says Mary, 'that'll be apt to get you a broken mouth, sometime'.*
* It is no unusual thing in Ireland for a country girl to
repulse a fellow whom she thinks beneath her, if not by a
flat at least by a flattening refusal; nor is it seldom that
the “argumentum fistycuffum” resorted to on such occasions.
I have more than once seen a disagreeable lover receive,
from that fair hand which he sought, so masterly a blow,
that a bleeding nose rewarded his ambition, and silenced for
a time his importunity.
“'Then,' says Dick, 'whoever does that must marry me.'
“'And them that gets you, will have a prize to brag of,' says she; 'stop yourself, Cuillenan—-single your freedom, and double your distance, if you plase; I'll cut my coat off no such cloth.'
“'Well, Mary,' says he, 'maybe, if you, don't, as good will; but you won't be so cruel as all that comes to—the worst side of you is out, I think.'
“He was now beginning to make greater freedom; but Mary rises from her seat, and whisks away with herself, her cheek as red as a rose with vexation at the fellow's imperance. 'Very well,' says Dick, 'off you go; but there's as good fish in the say as ever was catched.—I'm sorry to see, Susy,' says he to her mother, 'that Mary's no friend of mine, and I'd be mighty glad to find it otherwise; for, to tell the truth, I'd wish to become connected with the family. In the mane time, hadn't you better get us a glass, till we drink one bottle on the head of it, anyway.'
“'Why, then, Dick Cuillenan,' says the mother, 'I don't wish you anything else than good luck and happiness; but, as to Mary, She's not for you herself, nor would it be a good match between the families at all. Mary is to have her grandfather's sixty guineas; and the two moulleens* that her uncle Jack left her four years ago has brought her a good stock for any farm. Now if she married you, Dick, where's the farm to bring her to?—surely it's not upon them seven acres of stone and bent, upon the long Esker,** that I'd let my daughter go to live. So, Dick, put up your bottle, and in the name of God, go home, boy, and mind your business; but, above all, when you want a wife, go to them that you may have a right to expect, and not to a girl like Mary Finigan, that could lay down guineas where you could hardly find shillings.'
* Cows without horns.
** Esker; a high ridge of land, generally barren and
unproductive, when upon a small scale. It is also a ridgy
height that runs for many miles through a country.
“'Very well, Susy,' says Dick, nettled enough, as he well might, 'I say to you, just as I say to your daughter, if you be proud there's no force.'”
“But what has this to do with you, Shane?” asked Andy Morrow; “sure we wanted to hear an account of your wedding, but instead of that, it's Dick Cuillenan's history you're giving us.”