“Then since you won’t come with me,” said young Doran, “I must be off. I’ll let my mother know you are at the ‘Glenveigh Arms,’ and no doubt she will write to you. Good evening, everybody”; and he opened the half-door, and departed with his train of dogs.
“He is after offering us a pup,” said Katty, with complacency; “we are so lonesome here, since I buried me poor husband.”
“I know the names of the folk around from Mrs. Grogan,” said the visitor; “she has the place still at her finger-ends.”
“My name is Katty Foley, ma’am. I sure she will mind _me_ well; we were the wan age, and she and I had some fine jokes, together; to tell the truth, I was a bit of a go-between. Well that’s all past now. If the old gentleman had known, he’d have had me life! Aye, but he was the proud man. This girlie here is my daughter Mary, the only child I reared out of five, and all I have in the world, except a sister above at the junction!”
“Oh, indeed. Mr. Ulick seems a fine young man,” remarked the stranger.
“That’s true for ye, ma’am, as good as he looks, and the flower of the flock, the very twin of his father, the Colonel, so kind, and so feeling for the poor. Just a real decent clean-living boy!”
“That’s fine news, Mrs. Foley; and what about the other?”
“Oh, bedad, ma’am, I’d like well to say a good word for him too, if I could; but silence is best.”
“Sure the mother has him ruinated since he could walk. He is just an eyesore to the township, and a scandal”; and Katty shook her head till the horn spectacles fell into her lap. “Av course, he is young, and may mend, but all I can tell you is, that if I see him coming into heaven, I’ll say, thank God!”
The stranger did not pause to question Mrs. Foley’s confidence in her own future state, but inquired, in a nasal key, “But what does he do, anyhow, my good woman?”
“Everything he ought to leave alone, ma’am. He is fond of low company, and cock-fighting, and betting, and all sorts of devilment. He gets in at night by the pantry window, and his mother thinks he is an archangel.”
“Poor, is it! Faix, she’s a real rich woman, and small blame, and has the place in tip-top style, and keeps terrible state; but her servants is just starved.”
“Oh, mammy!” remonstrated Mary, “ye shouldn’t be talking so free to strangers.”