The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [166]
“Oh, they say a manny a thing—” she obsereved with well-simulated inanity “Arrah! dheen dheffeth, Dinny! thurrum cussoge um’na.”
“Yes, hurry on and give me the coat, Dinny,” said Charlotte, displaying that knowledge of Irish that always came as a shock to those who were uncertain as to its limitations.
The tailor untwisted his short legs and descended’ stiffly to the floor, and having helped Charlotte into the coat, pushed her into the light of the open door, and surveyed his handiwork with his large head on one side, and the bitten ends of thread still hanging on his lower lip.
“It turrned well,” he said, passing his hand approvingly over Miss Mullen’s thick shoulder; “afther all, the good stuff’s the best; that’s fine honest stuff that’ll wear forty of thim other thrash. That’s the soort that’ll shtand”
“To the death!” interjected Mrs. Lydon fervently.
“How many wrinkles are there in the back?” said Charlotte; “tell me the truth now, Dinny, remember ‘twas only last week you were ‘making your sowl’ at the mission.”
“Tchah!” said Dinny Lydon contemptuously, “it’s little I regard the mission, but I wouldn’t be bothered tellin’ ye lies about the likes o’ this,” surreptitiously smoothing as he spoke a series of ridges above the hips; “that’s a grand clane back as ever I see.”
“How independent he is about his missions!” said Charlotte jibingly. “Ha! Dinny me man, if you were sick you’d be the first to be roaring for the priest!”
“Faith, divil a roar,” returned the atheistical Dinny; “if I couldn’t knock the stone out of the gap for meself, the priest couldn’t do it for me.”
“Oh, Gaad! Dinny, have conduct before Miss Mullen!” cried Mrs. Lydon.
“He may say what he likes, if he wouldn’t drop candle grease on my jacket,” said Charlotte, who had taken off the coat and was critically examining every seam; “or, indeed, Mrs. Lydon, I believe it was yourself did it!” she exclaimed, suddenly intercepting an indescribable glance of admonition from Mrs. Dinny to her husband; “that’s wax candle grease! I believe you wore it yourself at Michael M’Donagh’s wake, and that’s why it was finished four days ago.”
Mrs. Lydon uttered a shriek of merriment at the absurdity of the suggestion, and then fell to disclaimers so voluble as at once to convince Miss Mullen of her guilt. The accusation was not pressed home, and Dinny’s undertaking to remove the grease with a hot iron was accepted with surprising amiability. Charlotte sat down on a chair whose shattered frame bore testimony to the renowned violence of Mrs. Lydon when under the influence of liquor, and encouraging the singed and half-starved cat on to her lap, she addressed herself to conversation.
“Wasn’t Michael M’Donagh husband to your mother’s cousin?” she said to the tailor; “I’m told he had a very large funeral.”
“He had that,” answered Dinny, pushing the black hair back from his high forehead, and looking more than ever like a Jewish rabbi; “three priests, an’ five an’ twenty cars, an’ fifteen pounds of althar money.”
“Well, the three priests have a right to pray their big best for him, with five pounds apiece in their pockets,” remarked Charlotte; “I suppose it was the M’Donagh side gave the most of the altar. Those brothers of old Michael’s are all stinking of money.”
“Oh, they’re middlin’ snug,” said Dinny, who had just enough family feeling for the M’Donaghs to make him chary of admitting their wealth; “annyway, they’re able to slap down their five shillins or their ten shillin’ bit upon the althar as well as another.”
“Who got the land?” asked Charlotte, stroking the cat’s filthy head, and thereby perfuming her fingers with salt fish.
“Oh, how do I know what turning and twisting of keys there was in it afther himself dyin’?” said the tailor, with the caution which his hearers understood to be a fatiguing but inevitable convention; “they say the daughter got the biggest half, an’ Shamus Bawn got the other. There’s where the battle’ll be between them.” He laughed sardonically, as he held up