United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Frank Finnerty, how are you? an' Vread, achora, not forgettin' you my hand to you both, but we're lost especially this gentleman, Mr. M'Carthy a great friend of Mr. O'Driscol's and Procthor Parcel's but a betther man than either o' them, I hope." "I am fairly knocked up, I admit," said M'Carthy "in fact, I am more jaded than I ever was in my life."
"Faix, it's a happy story for half the poor wives of the parish that you're in it," said Peggy, "sure, only fore " "Be dhe huath Vread, agus glak sho hould your tongue, Peggy, and taste this," said the mother of her mistress, handing her a glass: "If you intend to go together, in the name o' goodness fear God more than the midwife, if you want to have luck an' grace."
"It must be in the divil's basin, then," she replied, "for if one can judge by their eyes, you're more like one of his childre than your honest father's, whoever he was or is. Troth, I'm afeard it's a dirty business you're; all about to-night, if a body is to take you by your looks." "Why, then," observed another, "who 'ud think that poor die-away Vread had so much spunk in her?
"He is a gentleman named O'Connor," replied poor Vread, anxious, if possible, even at the risk of much subsequent abuse and ill-treatment, to conceal his name. "Ay," said Finnerty, corroborating her; much, indeed, to her astonishment, "he is a Mr. O'Connor, I believe, a very handsome-lookin', fine young fellow." "What the blazes," said another of them, "keeps him?
"Troth," she replied, with more vivacity than might have been expected from her, "when you spake to a dacent woman it ought to be with a clane face at any rate." "Why, Vread, how can you say it's dirty," replied the fellow, "when you know I washed it before I came out?"
Vread," he proceeded, "you must a been a great beauty wanst upon a time; a very purty face you had, they say." "Whatever it was," she replied, "I thank God I was never ashamed to show it like too many of my neighbors." "Don't be too sure that we're your neighbors, Vread."
Finnerty was not, as is the case in romances, either mysterious or awful. On the contrary, it was light and pleasant, and by no means calculated to heighten McCarthy's fears; who, to say truth, however, although resolute and full of courage, would as lief been spending the evening with his friend the proctor. "Well, Vread," said one of them, "any news in the mountains?"
"News in the mountains!" exclaimed Vread, "well, indeed, that's good." "Any deaths or marriages among the grouse, eh?" Vread, as we have said, had got a glass of spirits, a circumstance which, to a low heart but a kind one like hers, may probably have accounted for a portion of her energy, as well as of her sympathy with the apprehended danger to M'Carthy.
Is it for cryin' for my betrothed husband, that was sworn to me, an' I to him, before the eye of God above us? This day week I was to be his bride; an' now now Oh, Vread Reillaghan, take me to you! Let me go to his mother! My heart's broke, Vread Reillaghan! Let me go to her: nobody's grief for him is like ours. You're his mother, an' I'm his wife in the sight o' God.
There was a touching humility, and a feeble but heart-broken effort at self-respect in the poor woman's words and manner that were pitiful and pathetic to the last degree, and which even Finnerty himself was obliged to acknowledge. "But where's the use of thinking about these things now," he replied; "it isn't what we were then, Vread, but what we are now, that we ought to think of."
Word Of The Day