Chapter II (2)

Not very long afterwards, Police-Sergeant Corry, sitting with his pipe and newspaper in the porch of Shanlough Constabulary Barracks, saw crawl in at the gate a small child, who was followed on foot by another somewhat bigger. “Run away with you,” he called to them, and resumed his reading. But when he finished his column he perceived that they had sat down half way up the flagged path to the door, with no apparent intention of moving on. So he went to investigate.

His inquiry was on the whole unsuccessful. The baby’s evidence was quite inarticulate, and the little girl replied “Yis” to all his questions in a manner which made her a most unsatisfactory witness. It was a lonely place, on the edge of the bog, with no other houses near, and nobody else in sight; though, if he had only known, two pairs of eyes were all the while watching him through the thick fuschia hedge. “They don’t belong to tramps,” he said to himself, “for they’ve got very respectable boots on them, and dacint hats. Tell me, now, which way you’re after comin’ along here, there’s a good child,” he said to Biddy, and Biddy said “Yis.” Just then it began to rain violently, which led the Sergeant to bring them indoors to his wife, who was sewing in the little parlour. “Here’s a couple of childer that can’t give an account of theirselves,” he said to her. “We’d better keep them a bit, and as like as not we’ll presently have somebody peltin’ in with inquiries.” Whereupon Mrs Corry, having had some experience of such cases, gave them slices of sugar-sprinkled bread, and several empty spools to play with in a corner, while immediately afterwards two figures might have been espied running off at full speed across the bog, among the grey curtains of the shower.

About this time Tom Flannery was digging in his potato-patch at the fork of the Letteresk and Glasdrum roads. “Faix now, but Lizzie Hackett’s in a fine hurry, whatever ails her,” he said to himself as he became aware of a young woman trotting along the dyke. “Where at all are you takin’ off wid yourself to?” he shouted as soon as she was near enough; and Lizzie shouted back across the low stone wall: “Sure, they’re in great distraction above at the lodge. The two childer’s lost. They went out this mornin’ early, but a while ago the schoolmistress looked in wid word they’d niver been next or nigh her. Stole they are by them tinkers, I’ll bet you anythin’, and their poor mother away at the fair, and the ould woman shakin’ in her chair fit to thrimble the house down on her head. But runnin’ up to Connolly’s farm I am, for Minnie and Baby’s went there a few times along wid me, and its mostly the only place they know their way to hereabouts. You didn’t be chance see them goin’ by this mornin’?”

“Sorra a stim, _this_ mornin’ nor _that_ mornin’,” said Tom. “But if they’re strayed or stole you’d a right to lave word with the polis.”

“Och, lave word with them yourself,” Lizzie said, setting off again, partly because she never liked taking advice, and partly because she did not now wish to lengthen her hot race by calling at the barracks.

Tom rejoined: “Bedad, I’ve somethin’ else to do, me dear!” But when, by-and-by, he finished his job, he turned a bit out of his homeward way that he might pass the police-station. Sergeant Corry was looking over the arched gate into the road. “Dry weather, Sergeant, when it isn’t wet,” said Tom. “Did you hear tell anythin’ of two children bein’ lost?”

“What sort of childer now?” said the Sergeant. “Well, I dunno very rightly,” said Tom. “I never seen them; but they’re out of the lodge over there at the castle entrance, and ould Mrs Lawlor’s expectin’ her death wid the fright. A little girl and a baby, I think, they said.”

“Sure enough they answer to that description, the two I have inside here. The small one’s no size to spake of, and the other’s a girl, though she hasn’t got the gift of the gab yet. I’ll send them over to the lodge with Doyle and Atkinson that’s about settin’ off pathrollin’. It ’ill be a good job to get them shifted into their own quarters before night.”

To the lodge, accordingly, two tall constables carried the little Tierneys, encountering by the way a fierce shower, which twisted Biddy’s black locks into dripping rats’ tails, and soaked Peter’s fluff of fair hair till it shrunk into nothing, like a wisp of wet thistledown. Their arrival caused bitter disappointment to Mrs Lawlor, junior, who had lately returned to her despoiled home. She vehemently declared the forlorn-looking bundles to be no children of hers, nor anyways like them, and was disposed to resent the constables’ conjecture that Minnie and Baby had just run off for diversion with some of their schoolfellows to the fair. However, she consented to keep these strange children while a search was being made, and she beguiled her suspense by getting them into dry garments, outgrown by the probable victims of tinkers and tramps.

Meanwhile, Minnie and Baby had in reality been experiencing many vicissitudes. At first all had gone fairly well with them. After some roaming they had emerged from the shrubberies on to a sloping lawn, whence they had a grand view of the castle with its turrets and towers. It pleased them so much that they sat down on a bench beneath a big sycamore to enjoy the prospect and their oranges. This was the highest point of their success; for when they had just finishing peeling, and the grass all around them was thickly strewn with shreds of white-lined golden rind, suddenly there appeared to them an elderly, angry man in a straw hat, who wanted to know what they meant by trespassing on his grounds, and bade them clear up that disgraceful litter at once, and stood pointing his stick and glaring dreadfully at every single scrap of peel until it was picked up; and then, as they fled away like scared rabbits, shouted that he would give notice to the police to keep an eye on them. Thenceforward troubles gathered and gloom. When they escaped from the labyrinth of shrubberies they found themselves in strange fields, where they met with herds of what were certainly beasts, and, in Minnie’s opinion, most likely bulls. They were hunted out of a rickyard by a barking dog, and in their flight Baby lost a shoe, which they dared not turn back to discover. Soon afterwards she ran a thorn into her unshod foot and could hardly hobble along. It came on to rain so heavily that their new hats were battered and drenched out of all shape and hue, and Minnie tore a sleeve of her good jacket into ribbons scrambling through a hedge. As time elapsed they felt more and more thoroughly lost, and their terrors were increased by a dread that all the while they might perhaps be trespassers with the eye of the police upon them.

But at last, when they had almost despaired of ever, as Baby said, “bein’ _anywhere_ again,” as they stumbled along the edge of a ploughed field, they were met by a big boy carrying a bunch of bright tinware. Minnie had luckily still sense enough left to explain that they were looking for a gate-lodge of the castle; upon hearing which the boy just caught each of them by an arm and swung them through a gap in the ragged hedge, setting them down plump in the middle of a muddy lane. “Sure, there’s one widin’ a couple of stones’ throws off you, only you was headin’ the wrong way to get to it,” he said, pointing along the lane. “Them’s the gate-posts glimpsin’ at you out of the trees.” And the children perceived with relief and amazement that so it actually was. Full of joy and confidence they started again, but before they had gone many steps they met Lizzie Hackett setting out to see if there were any signs of the constables coming back with news of what, in her own mind, she called “them young torments.”

“Saints and patience!” she said when she saw them, “and so there you are. I declare to goodness I thought it was a couple of beggar childer comin’ along, you’re that quare shows. Where in the earthly world have you been the whole day?”

“We just took a bit--a bit of a walk like,” Minnie said, beginning to feel that their difficulties might not yet be all at an end.

“Well, to be sure--a fine bit of a walk,” said Lizzie, “wid your poor granny and your poor ma terrified out of their sivin sinses, and meself kilt stravadin’ over the parish after you. A race’s runnin’ on you for a couple of as bould childer as there is in Ireland.” Lizzie, being out of humour with everybody, preferred the chance of paying out the truants for the trouble they had caused her to the excitement of announcing their return, so she continued: “Howsome’er, you’ve no call to be hurryin’ yourselves now. You can be stoppin’ away as long as you plase, and longer after that again, for your ma says she won’t be bothered any more to put up wid the likes of such ungovernable brats, and she’s got herself a couple of nice, good little childer to keep that won’t be annoyin’ her losin’ themselves about the country instead of goin’ to their school. And she’s after dressin’ them illigant in the cloth cape that was belongin’ to you, Miss Minnie, and a one of Baby’s cotton frocks, and the two of them’s sittin’ this minyit as grand as anythin’ at all before the fire in the parlour. Pettin’ them finely herself is and not thinkin’ a thraneen of yous. It’s in your beds that them ones ’ill be sleepin’ this night. But sure you’d rather be tearin’ about under the rain in the fields like the rabbits,” said Lizzie, pulling her shawl over her head and walking on. “And it pitch dark,” she added over her shoulder.

If Minnie had been in her ordinary frame of mind she would have perceived how improbable this story sounded, and would have said to Baby: “Och, never mind; she’s only romancin’.” Just then, however, she was too tired and bewildered to take a sensible view of anything, and what Lizzie asserted alarmed and enraged them both. Still they more than half hoped that they would find it was not true at all. But as they trotted and hobbled past the parlour window they got a glimpse into the fire-lit room, and there, sure enough, two horrid little children were seated before the hearth, one wearing a pink frock, the other Minnie’s well-known brown cape. And he--which was the worst part of it--sat on Minnie’s mother’s knee, with a bitten biscuit in his hand. “’Deed she has really got them,” Minnie said to Baby with a sort of groan. “There’s no good in us goin’ in any more.” And both the little girls flung themselves down on a mossy log, which had been made into a seat, beneath an old laurel bush near the door. They had not noticed the sound of footsteps that were following them, but just then two figures came rushing by and darted into the house. In the parlour Mrs Lawlor heard the patter of feet, which she had been listening for so long, and she jumped up very quickly, only to meet with another disappointment.

Mick and Rosanna Tierney had enjoyed their time at the fair. They saw two shows, and bought as many sweets as possible with their remaining pennies. They were careful not to meet their mother, nor did they forget how desirable it was that they should be at home again before her. The heavy rain, too, made it easier for them to tear themselves away from among the stalls and booths and carts and set off across the bog to pick up Biddy and Peter at the barracks. Rosanna had three fruit drops and half a peppermint sugar-stick tied up for them in a corner of her wet pinafore. Mick had meant to bring Biddy a bull’s-eye, but he put it into his mouth just to taste, and forgot to take it out until it was too late.

At the police barracks the rain had driven Sergeant Corry indoors, but he came out when he heard the children clattering into the porch.

“If you plase, sir,” Mick said, panting, “we want the couple of childer we left--I mane we _lost_--here this mornin’ going to Killavin--a little one, and a bigger little girl--dark hair she has, the same as _her_.” “They’ve straw hats on them,” Rosanna struck in, “and the youngster has a grey flannen frock, and Biddy’s is blue, and she’s black stockin’s. She wouldn’t tell you her name, or say anythin’ only ‘Yis.’”

“Them’s the very two we had here till a while ago I packed them off to Mrs Lawlor up there at the castle lodge. Bedad,” said the sergeant, “it’s the wrong children I’m after sendin’ her. And what do you mean, I should like to know, by leaving them crawling about here and giving trouble and annoyance?”

But the Tierneys were not waiting to listen. “Come along, Rosanna,” said Mick, “we might be in time to get them yet if we hurry.” And they did hurry with an impetuosity which brought them head foremost into the Lawlors’ kitchen.

“What brings you here at all?” poor Mrs Lawlor said in much vexation when she saw who they were not. “It seems to me every strange child in the parish is takin’ upon itself to come tumblin’ in on top of us except me own little girls, and the deer knows where they may be.”

“We was only wantin’ to fetch away our two,” said Mick. “The sergeant sent you the wrong childer. That’s Peter you’ve got, ma’am--och, and there’s Biddy. You take hold of her, Rosanna; I’ve took him. And I seen a couple of little girls sittin’ roarin’ on the sate there next door, and we runnin’ in, that might be your ones, ma’am.”

Out sped Mrs Lawlor, hopeful again, and this time not in vain. “Children dear, what happint you at all?” she said, “and where have you been?”

“We got into an ould donkey-cart,” Minnie said deplorably, “and then we lost our ways--and an ould man’s after settin’ the police to keep an eye on us--and Baby’s one shoe is off her, so the other’s no good; and she’s run a thorn into her foot; and I’ve tore the cuff off of me sleeve; and our hats is destroyed. But we thought there wasn’t any use goin’ in, for Lizzie tould us you’d took them other ones instead.”

“A donkey-cart!” said Mrs Lawlor. “I always said those thieves of tinkers were at the bottom of it. But come in, me jewels; sure you’re drowned and perished. The polis ought to be ashamed of theirselves for not minding their business better.”

And in Mrs Lawlor’s mind, indeed, the blame was permanently shared by the tinkers and the police, which was of course convenient for her children, and probably did not in any way affect either the police or the tinkers.

As for the young Tierneys, they got home with such guilty expedition that they were all discovered innocently safe and dry by their own fireside when Mrs Tierney returned, with sugar-sticks, from the fair. And thus we must fear that the episode ended in a lamentable failure of poetical justice to all parties concerned.

THEIR NEW UMBRELLAS

One blustering March afternoon Mrs Mooney looked in at Thomas Cantillon’s to fetch a boot he was stitching for her, and there she found her neighbour, Mrs Doyle, half-way through a story. “I thought ’twas headlong into the deep gripe ’twould land me before ever it stopped,” Mrs Doyle was relating, “for the tuggin’ and pullin’ of it was more than I could contend wid.”

“You’d a right to let it go altogether sooner than that, ma’am,” said old Thomas, “considerin’ the pair of you’d be very apt to ha’ sted there once you got in.”

“’Deed now, maybe I might as well anyway,” said Mrs Doyle, “for I question will I get e’er a day’s work out of it again. Every bone in its unlucky body that isn’t broke seems to be twisted crooked, and strained like.”

“And what baste at all was it you were tryin’ to control, ma’am?” inquired Mrs Mooney. “If it was that ugly-tempered mule of Kelly’s, you’re the foolish woman to make an offer at it. Sure it’s as much as me own Tony himself can do to manage the ungovernable crathur.”

“Mules!” said Mrs Doyle. “What talk had anybody of them? Sure I was tellin’ Mr Cantillon the way me umbrella got destroyed on me yisterday, comin’ home from Mass in the storm. The win’ took a holt on it the instant I come out on the straight road, and had it next door to wranched out of me hand; and then inside out it blew itself on me wid a flap you might aisy hear in the city of Cork, and only for Dinny runnin’ up and raichin’ it down for me out of the sky, you might say, the dear knows where the either of us ’ud be this minyit. But look at the objec’ it is now. I misdoubt will it ever be fit for anythin’ again, unless scarin’ the crows.”

The umbrella did certainly appear much the worse for its recent unequal struggle. It was stuck helplessly half-open, bent ribs thrust themselves through jagged rents in its weather-stained cover, a menacing crack ran up its varnished yellow stick. Mr Cantillon, who makes boots, and mends miscellaneous property for Killymena, shook his head over this new patient long enough to emphasise the extremely skilful treatment which its case would require, and then he said: “Ah sure, ma’am, I’ll put some sort of a shape on it for you, ma’am, one way or another, though it ’ill be a ticklish job, and I wouldn’t like to promise you that it ’ill present a very handsome appairance. But just for to be usin’, I wouldn’t wonder if it was as good as new.”

“That’s more than ever it was widin my recollection then,” said Mrs Mooney; “darned it was, and the handle chipped ever since as long back as when ould Fergus Doyle did be ownin’ it.”

“Ay, did he, bedad! our family always kep’ an umbrella,” said Mrs Doyle.

As an umbrella is kept by several of the most respected families in Killymena, umbrellaless Mrs Mooney naturally surmised an innuendo in the statement, and hastened to rejoin: “Well, if it was me, I’d liefer get a drop of wet now and again than streel about houldin’ up an ould flitterjig that ’ud have people laughin’ at me behind me back, and I consaitin’ meself a great one all the while. I’d as soon put me head in a rag-bag be way of a shawl.”

“Sure, then, it’s well to be you, ma’am, that’s so contint the way you’re like to stop,” Mrs Doyle said, just a shade, perhaps, over-politely.

“See you here, Mrs Mooney, I’ve got your repairs done,” said Thomas Cantillon, preventing a repartee by the production of Mrs Mooney’s boot from behind his chair.

“You’re after patchin’ it,” she said, examining it with a lengthened face. “I thought a stitch was all it wanted. But in coorse a man must keep his trade goin’. That ’ill be a pinny more on me, I suppose now.”

“Och, keep your pinnies and tuppinnies, ma’am,” said Thomas; “me’s trade’s not so slack that I’ve any need to be stirrin’ it up wid clappin’ on extry patches. You can pay me the next pinny that tumbles down your chimney, and so can Mrs Doyle for her umbrella that I’ll have regulated again next Sunday.”

So Mrs Doyle and Mrs Mooney pointedly wished Mr Cantillon good evening, and wished one another nothing good or bad--at least not audibly--as they departed in opposite directions.

A sort of rivalry had long existed between Mrs Doyle and Mrs Mooney. It had begun when the simultaneous drowning of their fishermen husbands left each of them a young widow with one small baby; and it had gone on till now, when these infants had grown to man’s estate. They were, in fact, the central subject of the rivalry. At first, indeed, this had seemed hardly possible to anybody except Mrs Mooney herself, Mrs Doyle’s little Dinny being so obviously a much bigger and better-tempered baby than her own little Tony, who was weakly and fretful. As time went on, however, not only did Tony’s health improve, but he developed a quickness of wits and capacity for book learning which could be set against Dinny’s superior size and his prowess at all manner of athletic pursuits. Mrs Mooney, when hostilely critical, called Dinny Doyle “a big oaf,” while Mrs Doyle spoke of Tony Mooney as “that quare little shrimp.”

The two boys themselves had lived on fairly friendly terms from three years old to twenty, and now that they were to see something of the world beyond Killymena, they rejoiced at being able to do so in company. For they were just setting off to the city of Cork, a vast distance away, where Dinny had got employment on a little pleasure boat which rowed visitors to the Exhibition short lengths up and down the pretty River Lee; and Tony was to keep accounts in a restaurant near the entrance-gate. Sir Gerald Vane-Montfort had spoken for them to the Executive Committee, and hence these situations, the emoluments of which seemed splendidly liberal. So when Mrs Mooney related with indignant inaccuracy at supper-time how Mrs Doyle had been giving her impudence about not owning an old rag of an umbrella, Tony did not hesitate to promise her that he would bring her home the grandest umbrella in the parish. And on this same evening likewise, when Mrs Doyle doubted mournfully whether Mr Cantillon would ever contrive to splice the cracked handle, Dinny confidently bade her never mind, for she should have the best umbrella he could get in the city of Cork. Mrs Mooney said that Tony would find plenty of things to be spending his money on besides his ould mother, and Mrs Doyle said that Dinny had a right to be saving all he could towards the rent, and the seed-potatoes, and his suit of clothes; but notwithstanding their protests both women thought a great deal of these promises. On the grey morning of the lads’ departure, Mrs Mooney said to her son: “I wouldn’t mind bettin’ even sixpences that you’ll never have the notion of an umbrella in your head from this minyit till you’re steppin’ on to the platform here again--but, sure, ’twill be a good day whether or no.” Mrs Doyle was less outspoken; still, as they waited for the train, she could not forbear saying, “I declare to goodness, Dinny, the little shiny hole in the cloud there behind Loughlin’s house is the very moral of the shape of the biggest tear in me ould wreck of an umbrella.”

Spring, summer and autumn passed by; the season’s flowers had budded, blown and faded; and the Cork Exhibition, a brilliant, artificial blossom, was to vanish like the rest. Consequently Dinny Doyle and Tony Mooney were returning to Killymena. They had experienced an eventful and memorable time, but were not, on the whole, sorry to have done with it. Dinny was rather tired of watching the little boats slide up and down the water-chute and flounder into the stream amid a flurry of shrieks and splashes. The clatter of plates and glasses, mingled with the strains of a military band, had begun to pall upon Tony in his office box. And though in out-of-work hours sights and diversions were bewilderingly abundant, the homely features of quiet little Killymena seemed to both of them just then a more alluring prospect. Tony, it is true, was planning to leave it again soon for good, having heard of a situation near the city, whither he would, if possible, persuade his mother to move; but Dinny looked forward to resuming his place in Mick Devlin’s fishing-boat, and felt that it would be a pleasant thing once more to sit behind a tugging sail, in an ocean-odorous breeze, and to haul at a fishing-net. “There’s more raison and sinse in that after all,” he concluded, “than in paddlin’ about wid people that might as well be a flock of demented saygulls, accordin’ to the foolish gabbin’ they have out of them.” It was thus that, in captious moods, he characterised the conversation of his passengers. “And they holdin’ up them little frilly-flouncy affairs over their quare big hats--_sunshades_--musha cock them up, it’s the iligant wisps they’d be if there come a sup of rain,” he often added disdainfully. But then the far more effectual shelter that he was going to provide for his mother’s shawled head generally occurred to him, and always restored his good-humour. Tony also bethought him from time to time of his promise; but he found the recollection less soothing.

The two youths met on a platform of the labyrinthine-lined Cork railway terminus, and waited the tardy coming of their train seated on a bench beneath a lurid advertisement of coffee essence. They piled their baggage in a small heap between them, and kept upon it vigilant eyes, especially on two long, slender, brown-papered parcels: Dinny, indeed, felt more secure when his was in his own hand.

“I see you’re bringin’ an umbrella too,” Tony said, referring to this. “I’ve got me mother’s there. It was in a little shop on the Coal Quay; a good plain one it is. Bedad now, I might as well stop away as come back widout it, she’s that set on a one.”

“I seen this in a shop-windy in the Main Street a while ago,” said Dinny, “and I’ve been wonderin’ would I have the price of it saved in time. ’Twas only yisterday I had be good luck. There was ne’er another in it that I liked the appairance of as well. The girl sellin’ them said ’twas gintleman’s size, and I’d better take a lady’s one, that ’ud come somethin’ chaiper; but says I to her, me mother was as good as any gintleman ever stepped, and I wouldn’t put her off wid a skimpy size for the sake of a half-crown when I had it in me pocket. Rael tasty the handle is; and they say the mischief himself couldn’t blow it wrong side out; the frame’s guaranteed.”

“Gintlemen’s size might be apt to be a thrifle heavy and clumsy like for her to be carryin’,” Tony said hopefully.

“Divil a bit of it,” said Dinny; “me mother’s a strong woman yet, glory be to God. Just weigh it in your hand--or stop a minyit; I’ll sthrip the paper off of it and show you.”

Dinny unfastened the knotted twine with deft sailor’s fingers, and drew the slim, dark-green umbrella out of its shiny black case. The sleek folds were furled with wonderful symmetry about a polished cherry-wood stick, which ended in a richly-carved knob studded with burnished stars; a silver band further adorned it, and a twining shamrock spray, while a long flossy tassel floated with a finishing touch of elegance. “I won’t hoist it up,” he said; “for fear I mightn’t get it rolled again as smooth as they done it in the shop. But you can see by the feel of it that its rael strong silk; twilled it is.”

He was so absorbed in the proud pleasure of displaying and repacking his purchase that he did not observe how Tony’s countenance had fallen, and he looked up from his knot-tying with amazement at the tragical tones which burst forth.

“Silk bedad!” Tony said bitterly; “troth it is that. And the handle bates everythin’. She won’t look at mine, that’s sartin, for it’s as plain as plain, and only black alpacky it is, or some other common ould stuff. The man said it was good wear; but when she sees it alongside of silk--och, murdher! What did that one stand you in now?”

“Siventeen-and-six,” said Dinny.

“And mine I gave five shillin’s for, and me wid a florin a week more than you. I might as well be slingin’ it under the next train passes; there’s the whole of it. Sorra the hap’orth of use there is bringin’ it home to her, for it’s only annoyed she’d be. But ne’er another penny I had to spend on it, what wid this thing and that.”

Tony thrust his hands into his pockets, and with his eyes fixed gloomily on the toes of his brogues, and his shoulders shrugged up to his ears, sat moodily recalling the circumstances amid which his wages had so insidiously melted away. In the retrospect his proceedings looked silly enough. The tempting side-shows of the Exhibition, the rifle ranges, bars and refreshment-rooms had accounted for many small coins; others had been swallowed, to even less profit, by the penny-in-the-slot fortune-telling machines, which were stuck like snails all over the walls of the Exhibition buildings, or had gone for slides down the switchback and water-chute. He was feeling thoroughly disgusted with himself and his investments when Dinny pulled him by the sleeve. “Look here,” he said, “aren’t you and your mother about quittin’ out of Killymena for good next week?”

“We are so, if she’ll be ruled by me,” said Tony, “but divil a bit of me knows what mislikin’ she may take against it now if she’s disappointed over the plain umbrella.”

“Well then,” said Dinny, “I’ll thry can I conthrive so that me mother won’t be usin’ hers till the Sunday after, the way your mother won’t be put out of consait wid that one. She’ll like it well, no fear, so long as she doesn’t get the notion that another’s grander. Mind you, I dunno will I be able, for me mother’ll be dead set on takin’ it to Mass to-morra; but I’ll do me endeavours. I might manage to mislay it; that wouldn’t be a bad plan.”

Yet, while he proposed it, Dinny felt that he was despoiling his return of perhaps its most triumphant moment; and Tony, not unaware of this, said, with appreciation: “Yourself’s the dacint man.”

The circumstances which attended their home-coming seemed to favour Dinny’s design, for the night was so dark when they reached Killymena that the two women waiting at the dimly-lit station could barely see their sons, let alone take stock of bundles and parcels. Dinny got his baggage into his little nook of a room and stowed away the dangerous package unseen quite successfully. All supper-time he was expecting his mother to ask some question about her promised present, but she never did, though she threw out several hints that it went to his heart to ignore. But when she had wished him good-night, and he was standing, the long parcel in his hand, considering whether he could find it a safer hiding-place, she suddenly slipped in again, just for the enjoyment of another look and word, and beholding, could not forbear an exclamation: “Glory be to goodness, so you brought it after all! I was thinkin’ you maybe forgot it, unless you was only intendin’ to not give it to me till we’re just settin’ of to Mass to-morra.”

Dinny saw, accordingly, that there was nothing for it but to explain the matter fully, and if possible secure her co-operation. He stated the case as strongly as he could, enlarging upon the immensely superior quality and cost of this umbrella, and the extreme ill-nature of making poor Mrs Mooney think badly of her one, which was the best that Tony could afford. His eulogium was judiciously vague, because he apprehended that a detailed description, much more a glimpse, of the ornate handle and sheeny green folds would render his mother’s impatience to be showing them off altogether intolerant of postponement. It was not easy, even so, to prevail upon her, for memories of taunting speeches rankled to strengthen her contention that “she had no call to be puttin’ herself about to plase Judy Mooney, set her up!” However, he at length obtained her consent to lay aside the unopened parcel until to-morrow week. And he created a temporary diversion by producing a little scarlet volume out of which trailed a long and wonderful series of highly-glazed landscapes.

Next morning was, rather unluckily, just the weather for a new umbrella--drizzly showers, and no wind to threaten a precious novelty with rough usage. Nevertheless, Dinny got his mother safely off to eleven o’clock Mass under her old battered gingham, her dissatisfaction with which he sought to mitigate by holding it over her himself. He hoped that they would not fall in with the Mooneys, for he dreaded the effect which the actual sight of her neighbour’s glory might have upon his mother’s tongue. But when they were near the chapel door he saw what almost startled his own into unruliness, for a few yards in front of them paced Mrs Mooney, proudly holding up the very moral of _his_ grand green silk umbrella--nay, it was the identical same one, and no other; he espied the silver shamrocks shining as she furled it in the porch. Tony must have taken the wrong parcel last night by accident in the dark, “or else he done it on purpose, the villin.” His outrageous conduct in keeping it made that seem highly probable; and he certainly had a guilty air as he followed his exultant mother to their seat. Dinny determined to have it out with the thief of the world the instant service was done, and he sat irefully longing for that instant to arrive.

The congregation at last broke up, and as they stepped out Mrs Doyle bade Dinny take a hold of the ould umbrella for her, because her two hands would be full trying to keep her skirts from the mud. She might have added truthfully that she wished to detain her handsome son at her elbow, and, having accomplished this, she said complacently,--

“Mercy on us, Dinny avic did you see the show poor Mrs Mooney’s after makin’ of herself? In such a hurry she was to be stickin’ up her gazabo of a new umbrella she’d scarce wait till she was clear of the door, but took and nearly prodded the eye out of young Barney Loughlin, whirlin’ it up in the face of him. The woman might ha’ more wit. And it not rainin’ a drop then either--it’s only beginnin’ again this minyit. And, child dear, but I’m glad it’s a diff’rint sort of a one you brought me; for I couldn’t abide the thoughts of that quare-lookin’ yoke at all. It’s twyste too big for one thing, and them outlandish cockasinas stuck on the handle has an ojis, ugly apparence--rael comical. I never seen anybody wid them. I should suppose them little gimcracks do be very chape. And tellin’ you the truth, I always had a great wish for a black umbrella.”

“Black the one at home is anyway,” said Dinny, looking somewhat disconcerted, “and as plain as plain.”

“Well now, alanna, that’s a good hearin’,” said Mrs Doyle. “Black’s the very best colour it could be, it’s that dacint at a buryin’. Frettin’ in me own mind I was, thinkin’ you might bring me a brown or a green one. But black’s iligant; I needn’t be ashamed to hould it up at any funeral on the countryside.”

By this time they had overtaken Mrs Mooney and her son, who were talking to a knot of neighbours. Tony, with dismayed visage, slipped round to Dinny’s free hand and whispered apologetically,--

“Och, Dinny, it was the wrong parcels we took in the dark, and before I knew where I was she had it opened on me, and in such an admiration of it she was that I hadn’t the heart to be tellin’ her. But I’ll get it back to-morra from the crathur by some manner of manes; I will so.”

“Ah, whisht, and no matter about it,” Dinny replied. “We’ll swap and lave them the way they are; me mother’d liefer have the other one.”

Tony’s half incredulous relief needed some further explanatory asides; and meanwhile compliments were politely passing between their mothers.

“’Deed now, Mrs Mooney, ma’am, that’s a grand umbrella you’ve come by entirely. Rael off the common it is; I never seen the likes of it at all.”

“Ah sure, ma’am, it isn’t too bad. Me son’s after bringin’ it home to me. But it’s a heavy one, let me tell you, to be liftin’ all the way, and me gown ’ill be disthroyed streelin’ through the mud. Bedad it’s the fine, tall, upstandin’ stick you’ve got there to yours, Mrs Doyle, this day, and that’s no lie.”

Mrs Doyle, smiling broadly, said merely: “Och, he’s a young slieveen;” but she suppressed a forthcoming unfavourable critique upon the silver-banded handle, which Tony, in haste to take the hint, seized, saying: “Step along wid you, mother, and I’ll studdy it over your head. Sure, it’s no great weight once you’re a bit used to carryin’ it.”

And thereupon four people, under two umbrellas, set their faces, well-satisfied, home.

A SMALL PRACTICE

The most noteworthy event in Cocky M‘Cann’s history up to its ninth year was the accident by which he broke his arm and became for some weeks an inmate of the Ballygowran Union Infirmary. That this disaster befell him in the course of a repeatedly-forbidden attempt to mount Mr Scanlon’s cross mare, and that he himself laid all the blame on the bosthoons who “were after coverin’ her wid an ojis ould bit of sackin’ as slithery as ice, the way nobody could get e’er a firm holt of her at all,” were characteristic features easily recognisable by any of Cocky’s acquaintances. That it _had_ befallen him anyhow seemed a very serious matter to himself, but still more so to his mother, upon whom it entailed the grievous necessity of a temporary separation from her idolised only child. Nevertheless, his removal beyond reach of her petting and humouring gave him leisure to draw the morals pointed by his own doing and suffering, and to study various object lessons that were set before him as he roved convalescent through the wards. But although these were not wholly without effect, and although he did return to Ballylogan a few degrees less headstrong than he had left it, he had unluckily taken up one new notion which tended to obscure any traces of improvement, and even led his neighbours occasionally to pronounce him “twyste as ungovernable as he was before.”

This notion was a firm belief that during his sojourn in hospital he had acquired such skill in medicine and surgery as fully qualified him to prescribe for any of his ailing fellow-creatures, or to operate upon them, as circumstances seemed to demand. Of course, if Cocky had confined himself to entertaining this vainglorious opinion, it would have been a very harmless vanity, calling for nothing more censorious from his elders than: “Och, now, isn’t it the quare, ould-fashioned crathur?” But that was by no means the case. Cocky always had a perilous propensity for putting his theories into practice, nor did he forbear to do so here whenever he saw a chance. And in consequence he became more than ever a terror to adjacent owners of small live stock, human and otherwise. Mrs M‘Loughlin, for instance, was only just in the nick of time, by the best of good luck, to prevent him from administering to her little Lizzie a murky mixture compounded of varnish, washing-soda, soft soap and tea, which he declared looked and smelt the very same as the black bottle he used to be seeing Nurse Lane at the Infirmary curing hundreds and thousands of childer out of, that was worse with the whooping-cough than Lizzie.

Luck did not always intervene so opportunely. In the case of the Nolans’ duck circumstances enabled Cocky to carry out his treatment with more freedom from interference. Having kept his patient under observation for some time, he had formed the opinion that it was “waddling as crooked as a ram’s horn,” and furthermore that “the left leg was bruck on it, and had a right to be plastered up stiff,” in the manner, as much as possible, of a fractured limb, which he had watched with interest during his attendance at his medical school; and the result was that after a day’s anxious search the hapless fowl was discovered helplessly rooted to a retired spot by the ponderous ball of mortar and clay in which one leg had been encased. When extricated with difficulty its lameness appeared to be so much aggravated that Mrs Nolan was presently obliged to kill it to save its life, at a dead loss. “The finest young duck,” she protested, “in the parish, and worth every penny of half-a-crown, if it wasn’t only for disthruction bein’ done on it by a bould-behaved little tormint, that the polis ought to be walkin’ off to the lock-up out of dacint people’s way, if the seargint was good for anythin’ else except playin’ poker in the barrack-room and not mindin’ his business.” It is fair to note, on the other hand, how, in Mrs M‘Cann’s opinion, so confident as to be proclaimed loudly from her own front door: “One-and-six would ha’ bought the last feather on the crathur’s back twyste over, and divil a much else anybody’d ha’ got off it--a skinny little bag o’ bones, wid ne’er a penn’orth of dirty male thrown to it ever since it looked out of the shell.” As for Cocky, in response to all upbraiding he simply “gave impidence,” and declared with exasperated regret that: “If the fool of a baste ’ud ha’ kep’ aisy wid its quackin’ and bawlin’ he’d have had it grandly cured soon enough, for there was nothin’ else ’ud ha’ been bringin’ anybody next or nigh th’ ould shed wunst in a month of Sundays.”

The duck’s fate thrilled from end to end of the M‘Canns’ cabin-row, and the shock would have been more entirely unpleasurable if it had happened at the expense of some family other than the Nolans. They had never been very well liked at Ballylogan, especially since a married daughter and son-in-law had come to live with them. Nobody, indeed, had much to say against old Jim Nolan, nor the daughters, Katty and Anne, while the sayings against his wife and the two Gildeas were rather vague, being seldom more definite than statements which set forth that Mrs Nolan was a quare one, and that Patsy Gildea had the face of an ass. Widow Gilletty gave voice to the prevailing sentiment when she remarked of the Gildea-Nolan alliance that “by the rule of contraries she’d have expected that Rose to have took up wid some dacinter man than himself.” Still, this hazy misliking would have in a measure toned down the neighbours’ disapproval of Cocky’s unsuccessful experiment, had not their righteous wrath been sustained by a strong sense of the possibility that he might at any moment seek a subject among their own belongings, an uneasiness which found relief in anticipating the curtailment of Cocky’s ill-employed hours of idleness by his attendance at the Letterowen National School. He had lately begun his education there in accordance with directions left by his seafaring father, happily so much to his taste that he really followed the line of least resistance in carrying them out. Enforced abstinence now whetted his appetite for knowledge until he was eager to resume his studies almost before Mrs M‘Cann considered his recovery sufficiently complete. The daily setting forth of Cocky M‘Cann on an absence of several hours’ duration was viewed with complacency by the eye of Ballylogan. His mother’s tendency to regret was too trivial an exception to be regarded as more than, so to speak, a very slight cast in that composite orb.

Before long, however, his schooling was again interrupted, this time by a local epidemic of influenza, which caused a prolongation of the Christmas holidays. They were at Ballylogan a dismal season, what with one thing and another, including, it must be said, the presence of Cocky, who turned the calamity to his own purposes. His pleasure was to call upon house-bound sufferers, whom if he could not always persuade patiently to receive his medicine, he not seldom succeeded in seriously alarming by the grave nature of his diagnoses. “I declare to goodness, ma’am,” Mrs Sweeny reported to a crony, “it’s terrified entirely me poor sister was yesterday evenin’ wid the romancin’ he had out of him. Sittin’ all of a shake in her chair she was when I come in, and says I to meself the minyit I laid eyes on her: ‘As sure as anythin’, the woman’s got the shiverin’ ague;’ but says she to me ’twas just the turn she was after gettin’ wid the awful talk of Cocky M‘Cann. For says she he run in and tould her he well knew by the look of her it was mortal bad she was wid ivery sort of desperit sickness. ‘Bedad,’ says she, ‘I couldn’t make an offer at repaitin’ the quare-soundin’ words he said was ailin’ me; for,’ says she, ‘I never heard the like of them before--not wid Dr Whyte himself,’ says she. ‘And sure,’ says she to me, ‘if it was about gettin’ her death she was wid any nathural description of complaint, that might be no more than the will of God, and some sinse and raison in it.’ But what all that Cocky was after tellin’ her was a dale worse than the _new-money_ or the _bluerissy_, and it gave her the cowld creeps. And to the back of that, there was some manner of outrageous ould brash he was biddin’ her cure herself wid--lamp-oil and traicle and salt--I dunno the half of it--and axin’ me she was should she be thryin’ it. So says I to her, if she’d be said by me, she’d just dhrink a good sup of hot buttermilk-whey, and let alone meddlin’ wid any of the spalpeen’s prescriptions--set him up--that were fit to poison the parish. But sure now, ma’am, Mrs M‘Cann had a right to keep the tormintin’ brat at home, instead of him to be runnin’ into other people’s houses, and frightenin’ them out of their misfortnit minds.” To whom Julia Hogan replied: “Och, Mrs M‘Cann is it? Sure she’s that foolish about him, it’s my belief she consaits he’s the great docther entirely. If he bid her take and ait the ashes off the hearth she’d be apt to go do it; and as for him minding anythin’ she said, she might all as well be spakin’ to the sparras hoppin’ in the hedges.”

Several other neighbours were visited with similar warnings and advice, which Cocky’s mother was in truth quite powerless to prohibit. But before school opened again his attention was diverted from the health of Ballylogan by a momentous occurrence. It was a piece of great luck, nothing less than his picking up on the road an envelope containing a five-pound note. The white cover had not a stroke of writing on it, and the note, its sole contents, looked speckless too, as if little handled. Now, however, it was subjected to much fingering and minute scrutiny by a selection of the M‘Canns’ acquaintances, losing under the process some of its unsullied crispness, while its genuine character as a Bank of Ireland note, worth a twelve months’ rent and more, seemed to be thereby only the firmlier established. Opinion was far less decided about the probable way in which it had come to be so improbably lying on the path under O’Carroll’s fence, just at the gap where the Ballylogan children climb up and down to and from school. The most opposite views, again, were held as to what Mrs M‘Cann should do with this treasure-trove. They ranged from those of the rigid moralist who laid down the stern law that “she had a right to go straight off and lave it wid the polis or Father Mooney,” to the reckless declaration that she would be “the biggest fool ever walked if she didn’t spind ivery pinny of it just as she pleased.” In the end she compromised the matter by determining to put it up safely until she could consult Himself, otherwise Bernard M‘Cann, who was expected home from a voyage in a few weeks’ time.

This arrangement met with, on the whole, approval, not being opposed even by Cocky, who was actually almost slightly over-awed by the magnitude of his own achievement. The possibility of personally consuming such vast wealth did not occur to his wildest imagination, and he readily assented to the bestowal of the precious envelope in a recondite nook. But he did make his find a pretext for demanding more than usually frequent pennies from his mother. “Just you wait, then, till I come home wid the next pounds-and-pounds note I get, me good woman,” he would retort at any demur. And he so often heard laudatory comments upon “the cuteness of the crathur, mind you, that had the sinse to know it was somethin’ val’able in place of to be tearin it up the way the other childer’d ha’ been apt to do,” that, what with conceit of wisdom, and exultance in many extra sugar-sticks, his elation waxed apace. In fact, his spirit might at this time have been augured strutting with very appropriate gait towards an imminent fall.

As for Mrs M‘Cann, the keen edge of her pleasure at their good luck was prematurely turned by a misfortune commonplace enough--too common--in the shape of a bad toothache which presently attacked her. Upon its advent all her joy in the prospect of riches vanished away with the promptitude which occasionally disposes us to wonder that happiness, perpetually suspended at the mercy of any one among a myriad nerve threads, should ever attain to even the briefest span of existence. Being a very robust person, she naturally took a despondent view of her case, and when the malady had tormented her for a night and a day she lost hope and temper. She morosely repelled the neighbours’ sympathy, and even Cocky found his proffers of infallible remedies, extraction included, received with testy curtness, a novel and disconcerting experience, which made him all the more anxious that a state of things so uncongenial should come to a speedy end. He was far from pleased at being summarily told to run off wid himself and lave moidherin’ a body gabbin’ about what they done in the Infirmary; ’twas no manner of use, and the cowld pitaties ’ud do plinty well enough for the dinner; _she_ didn’t want anythin’ at all, and couldn’t be bothered warmin’ them up.

It was on his way to fetch a jug of water from the public pump, about sunset, that Cocky fell in with Mrs Gildea, going the same errand. Chiefly out of perversity, he held this unpopular person in somewhat high esteem, and treated her to more civility than he generally bestowed upon the other neighbours. Mrs Gildea had just then been having words with her husband, who was sitting, head in hands, on a tub at her father’s door. Her words had been to the effect that if there was a bigger ould slouch in the country than himself, she didn’t know where he look for him. Tom Gildea, whose several questionable qualities did not, to do him justice, comprise a huffy temper, had merely replied: “The county be choked. Sure what chance has a man to be doin’ anythin’ in the likes of this little ould glory-hole? Onless he’d the luck of the young rapscallion there I see runnin’ out of Mrs M‘Cann’s house, that’s after pickin’ up a fortin off the road, would ha’ took the two of us over to the States you do be ravin’ about.” To which his wife had rejoined, with acrimony: “Bedad, then, it’s one while a lazy divil like you’d be pickin’ up e’er a fortin in the States, or any place else.”