“How did you stop her going to the far end of the island?” said Frank, “if she thought there was an infectious fever for Mr. Pennefather to catch----”
“I dare say you mentioned the wild heifer,” said Priscilla.
“Rather mean of you that,” said Priscilla. “The rats were Peter Walsh’s originally. You shouldn’t have taken them. That’s what’s called--What is it called, Cousin Frank? Something to do with plagues, I know. Is there such a word as plague-ism? Anyhow it’s what poets do when they lift other poets’ rhymes and it’s considered mean.”
“It was me told Peter Walsh about the rats,” said Kinsella, repelling an unjust accusation. “The way they came swimming in on the tide would surprise you, and the gulls picking the eyes out of the biggest of them as they came swimming along. But that wouldn’t stop them.”
“I’ll just run up and have a word with Barnabas,” said Priscilla. “It’ll be as well for him to know that father and Lord Torrington are out after him today in the Tortoise.”
“It’ll be all right,” said Priscilla. “They’ll never get here. But of course Barnabas may want to make his will in case of accidents. Just you help the young gentleman ashore, Kinsella. He can’t get along very well by himself on account of the way Lord Torrington treated him. Then you’d better haul the boat up a bit. It’s rather beginning to blow and I see the wind really has got round to the southeast. I hardly thought it would, but it has. Winds so seldom do what everybody says they’re going to. I’m sure you’ve noticed that.”
She walked up the rough stony beach. A fierce gust, spray-laden and eloquent with promise of rain, swept past her.
“If I’d known,” said Kinsella sulkily, “that half the country would be out after them ones, I’d have drownded them in the sea and their tents along with them before I let them set foot on Inishbawn.”
“Lord Torrington won’t do you any harm,” said Frank. “He’s only trying to get back his daughter.”
“I don’t know,” said Kinsella, still in a very bad temper, “what anybody’d want with the likes of that girl. You’d think a man would be glad to get rid of her and thankful to anybody that was fool enough to take her off his hands. She’s no sense. Miss Priscilla has little enough, but she’s young and it’ll maybe come to her later. But that other one--The Lord saves us.”