Well, for fear of any fresh shindy, I got the luggage tied upon the shay, Dick shook hands with Callaghan, and sent his compliments to his sister Sophy,--and away we drove to Moate; and the next evening got safe to Dublin.
Of all the jobs ever a man undertook, the sorest was to look after Dick Macnamara. Ye might as well herd a basketful of black-beetles, as keep him in sight: and the two days we stopped in Dublin, though I watched him like a bailiff, he got into two fights--rid of thirty pounds--and snug into the watchouse afterwards. ‘Pon my soul, my heart was fairly broke with him. When we landed at Holyhead, and were fairly out of Irelan’, says I to myself, “Maybe we may come some speed now;” but _Mona-sin-dhiaoul_!--our troubles were only beginnin’.
Troth, at one time, I thought we would never have reached London at all: and as it was, we were three weeks upon the road. We never stopped for the night, but Dick discovered some divil to detain us. One while he would be in love with the mistress, and at another, dyin’ about the maid--and all of them he swore upon the book to marry on his return. We came to England to look for one woman--an’ if he had but kept his word, we would have gone back with one and twenty; but as matters turned out, the divil a wife we brought home at all at all.
While he would be philandrin’ at the inns, I was makin’ inquiries for a lady that would fit us; and though I heard tell of three as we came along, the divil an eye, let alone a finger, Dick Maenamara iver could get on ather of them--for we had always the worst of luck. The first we tried was the daughter of a squire, and as we were crossin’ the fence to get into the pleasure-ground, that I heard she generally walked in, we were spied by a keeper on the watch, and taken for poachers he had chased before, and, only that his gun missed fire, we would have been murdered on the spot. We made an offer at a widdo’, but Dick managed to slip into a steel trap, and nearly lost his leg. Another trial was at a ward of Chaneery, and we were hardly in the domain, till we were handed over by her guardian to the beadles. They swore we were rogues and vagabonds, and clapt us into the stocks for the evening, and give us a free lodgin’ the same night in a place they called the cage. At last we managed to get up to London, Dick with one skirt only to his coat, as he had lost the other in a skrimmage with a constable; and a rap more than three guineas and a half, we hadn’t between us to bless ourselves on! Nobody could tell how the rest of the ould ladies’ hundred went, but Dick Maenamara and the divil.