The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [154]
It was therefore the more agreeable that, on this same raw, grey Saturday morning, when Norry’s temper had been unusually tried by a search for the nest of an out-lying hen, Mary Holloran, the Rosemount lodgewoman, should have walked into the kitchen.
“God save all here!” she said, sinking on to a chair, and wiping away with her apron the tears that the east wind had brought to her eyes; “I’m as tired as if I was afther walking from Galway with a bag o’ male!”
“Musha, then, cead failthe, Mary,” replied Norry with unusual geniality; “is it from Judy Lee’s wake ye’re comin’?”
“I am, in throth; Lord ha’ mercy on her!” Mary Holloran raised her eyes to the ceiling and crossed herself, and Norry and Bid Sal followed her example. Norry was sitting by the fire singeing the yellow carcase of a hen, and the brand of burning paper in her hand heightened the effect of the gesture in an almost startling way. “Well now,” resumed Mary Holloran, “she was as nice a woman as ever threw a tub of clothes on the hill, and an honest poor crayture through all. She battled it out well, as owld as she was.”
“Faith thin, an’ if she did die itself she was in the want of it,” said Norry sardonically; “sure there isn’t a winther since her daughther wint to America that she wasn’t anointed a couple of times. I’m thinkin’ the people th’ other side o’ death will be throuncin’ her for keepin’ them waitin’ on her this way!”
Mary Holloran laughed a little and then wiped her face with the corner of her apron, and sighed so as to restore a fitting tone to the conversation.
“The neighbours was all gethered in it last night,” she observed; “they had the two rooms full in it, an’ a half gallon of whisky, and porther and all sorts. Indeed, her sisther’s two daughthers showed her every respect; there wasn’t one comin’ in it, big nor little, but they’d fill them out a glass o’ punch before they’d sit down. God bless ye, Bid Sal,” she went on, as if made thirsty by the recollection; “have ye a sup o’ tay in that taypot that’s on th’ oven? I’d drink the lough this minute!”
“Is it the like o’ that ye’d give the woman?” vociferated Norry in furious hospitality, as Bid Sal moved forward to obey this behest; “make down the fire and bile a dhrop o’ wather the way she’ll get what’ll not give her a sick shtummuck. Sure, what’s in that pot’s the lavin’s afther Miss Charlotte’s breakfast for Billy Grainy when he comes with the post; and good enough for the likes of him.”
“There was a good manny axing for ye last night,” began Mary Holloran again, while Bid Sal broke up a box with the kitchen cleaver, and revived the fire with its fragments and a little paraffin oil. “And you a near cousin o’ the corp’. Was it herself wouldn’t let you in it?”
“Whether she’d let me in it or no I have plenty to do besides running to every corp’-house in the counthry,” returned Norry with an acerbity that showed how accurate Mary Holloran’s surmise had been; “if thim that was in the wake seen me last night goin’ out to the cow that’s afther calvin’ with the quilt off me bed to put over her, maybe they’d have less chat about me.”
Mary Holloran was of a pacific turn, and she tried another topic. “Did ye hear that John Kenealy was afther summonsing me mother before the binch?” she said, unfastening her heavy blue cloak and putting her feet up on the fender of the range.
“Ah, God help ye, how would I hear annything?” grumbled Norry; “it’d be as good for me to be in heaven as to be here, with ne’er a one but Nance the Fool comin’ next or nigh me.”
“Oh, indeed, that’s the thruth,” said Mary Holloran with polite but transient sympathy. “Well, whether or no, he summonsed her, and all the raison he had for putting that scandal on her, was thim few little hins and ducks she have, that he seen different times on his land, themselves and an owld goat thravellin’ the fields, and not a bit nor a bite before them in it that they’d stoop