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Hyacinth was bitterly disappointed; but hope, when it is born of enthusiasm, dies hard, and he was greatly interested in a speech which he read one day in the 'Mayo Telegraph'. It had been made at a meeting of the League by an Ardnaree shopkeeper called Dowling. A trade rival the fact of the rivalry was not emphasized had advertised in a Scotch paper for a milliner.
The speech concluded with a passionate peroration and a verse, no doubt declaimed soundingly, of 'The West's Awake. Hyacinth made an expedition to Ardnaree, and called hopefully on the orator. His reception was depressing in the extreme. The shop, which was large and imposing, was stocked with goods which were obviously English, and Mr. Dowling curtly refused even to look at the samples of Mr.
There were rumours that a sceptical insurance company made difficulties about paying the compensation demanded; but the inhabitants of Ardnaree marked their confidence in the husband of an Archbishop's niece by presenting him with an address of sympathy and a purse containing ten sovereigns. Most of Hyacinth's business was done with small shopkeepers in remote districts.
It led in the direction of Ardnaree, which my Irish scholarship translates "King's Hill," but I stopped short at the ruins of the old workhouse, and after a glance over the domain of Captain Jones went back through the double row of fairly good cottages, and the numerous clans of cocks and hens which scratched for a precarious living on the King's highway.
The country-people who lived out of reach of such centres of fashion as Ardnaree and Clogher were sufficiently unsophisticated to prefer things which were really good. Hats and bonnets were not quite universal among the women in the mountain districts far back where they spoke Irish, and Mr. Quinn's head-kerchiefs were still in request.
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