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"You will have something worth riding when that fellow is fit to break in, my girlie," he had said, and his prophecy had been amply fulfilled. Mick Shanahan said he'd never put a leg over a finer pony. Norah knew there never had been a finer anywhere.
Supper was a majestic meal, spread on long tables in a big tent. Mr. Linton led the way to it with Mrs. Brown, followed by Mick Shanahan, who conveyed Norah much in the way he danced with her as if she were a piece of eggshell china, and apt to crack with careless handling.
"Lots of boys out, eh?" "Yes, look up Shanahan. He was just asking for you a moment ago." It was thus that the little theatre resounded to a babble of successful voices, the creak of fine clothes, the commonplace of good-nature, and all largely because of this man's bidding.
Norah's pony was standing near an old black horse for which he had a great affection. They were nearly always to be found together in the yards or paddocks. Even unbrushed as he was, the sunlight rippled on his bay coat when he moved, showing the hard masses of muscle in his arched neck. "Beauty, ain't he?" It was Mick Shanahan, on his way to another paddock to bring in some colts.
His health moreover was not good, and in less than six months after the completion of the work of the Commission, he departed this life at the age of 75. Mr. George Shanahan, Assistant Secretary of the Board of Works, was the capable Secretary of the Commission. He had the advantage of being a railwayman.
The tune broke into "St. Patrick's Day," and Murty O'Toole gave a sudden involuntary shout, his hand above his head, Mick Shanahan echoed it; the Irish music was in their blood, and the old man with the brown fiddle had power to make them boys again.
Two other men appeared at the kitchen door Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone each wearing, in defiance of regulations, some battered remnant of uniform that marked the "digger," while Mick, in addition, would walk always with a slight limp.
"We've got Marshal, Mr. Wally." "Give him to Murty," Wally answered as he ran. "I'm riding Shannon." He raced on. "That means he's going across country," said Dave Boone. "For two pins I'd go too." "Don't you you'd never get your horse over them fences," Shanahan said. "An' it'll take Mr. Wally all his time to get across them wired paddocks of Maclennan's. Hope he don't break Shannon's laigs."
They remained sitting on the tables, talking, while presently David Linton went away to his study, and, one by one, Murty and Boone and Mick Shanahan drifted in. There was so much to tell, so much to ask about; they talked until the dusk of the short winter afternoon stole into the kitchen, making the red flames in the stove leap more redly. It was time to dress for tea.
Norah had been allowed to look on at one or two of these gatherings. She thought them the height of human bliss, and was only sorry that sheer inability to dance prevented her from "taking the floor" with Mick Shanahan, the horse breaker, who had paid her the compliment of asking her first.
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