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Updated: July 21, 2025
The ex-tinker picked up the bottle with the candle. "Look at that!" he said, lowering the light and displaying a long transverse scar beginning at the mare's knee and ending in an enlarged fetlock. "I seen that," said the smith. "And look at that!" continued Mr. Fennessy, putting back the shaggy hair on her shoulder.
Even in the south-west of Ireland it is not usual to keep horses out quite so late in the year, but Mr. Fennessy, having begun his varied career as a travelling tinker, was not the man to be bound by convention. He had provided the mare with the society of a donkey and two sheep, and with the shelter of a filthy and ruinous cowshed.
He examined each hoof in succession by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, raked his fire together, and then, turning to Mr. Fennessy, remarked: "Ye'd laugh if ye were here the day I put a slipper on this one, an' she afther comin' out o' the thrain last June it was. 'Twas one Connolly back from Craffroe side was taking her from the station; him that thrained her for Miss Fitzroy.
"I jolly soon kicked him on to his legs," went on Freddy, "not that they were much use to him he must have been on the booze all night. After that I went on to the stable yard, and if you'll believe me, the two chaps there had never turned up at all at half-past eight, mind you! and there was Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believed that there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last night.
Fennessy arranged his course of action. "Well, Larry," he said, "I'll tell ye now what no one in this counthry knows but meself and Patsey Crimmeen. Sure I know it's as good to tell a thing to the ground as to tell it to yerself!" He lowered his voice. "'Twas Mr. Gunning of Streamstown bought that one from Miss Fitzroy at the Dublin Show, and a hundhred pound he gave for her!"
"Oh, the Lord save us!" wailed the kitchen-maid irrepressibly from the scullery. "I shall speak to Fennessy myself about this," said Mrs. Alexander, making for the door with concentrated purpose, "and in the meantime I wish to hear no more of this rubbish." "I'm sure Fennessy wishes to hear no more of it," said Barnet acridly to Mrs. Griffen, when Mrs.
Alexander had passed swiftly out of hearing, "after the way those girls have been worryin' on at him about it all the morning. Such a set out!" Mrs. Griffen groaned in a polite and general way, and behind Barnet's back put her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and winked at the kitchen-maid. Mrs. Alexander found her conversation with Willy Fennessy less satisfactory than usual.
The glass sank from the paragon's lips, the arm of Mr. Fennessy fell from her waist; the circle of servants, tinkers, and country people vainly tried to efface themselves behind each other. "Barnet!" said Mrs. Alexander in an awful voice, and even in that moment she appreciated with an added pang the feathery beauty of a slice of Barnet's sponge-cake in the grimy fist of a tinker. "Mrs.
But, sure, gerrls has no courage " Barnet's smile was again one of wintry superiority. "Willy Fennessy and Patsey Crimmeen was afther seein' it too last night," went on Mrs. Griffen, "an' poor Willy was as much frightened! He said surely 'twas a ghost. On the back avenue it was, an' one minute 'twas as big as an ass, an' another minute it'd be no bigger than a bonnive "
"She's shlack enough yet," said the carman. "Ah, wait awhile!" said Mr. Fennessy easily, "in a week's time when I'll have her clipped out, she'll be as clean as amber." The conversation flowed on to other themes. It was nearly dark when the carman took his departure, and the smith, a silent youth with sore eyes, caught hold of one of the grey mare's fetlocks and told her to "lift!"
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