Part 20

And he gave himself a shove, so that he raised his shoulders above the wall. A brave, big pair they were, too, but they were only just held up on crutches. Hughie could balance himself upon them, and get about, as handy as you please. But he was dead of his two legs.

"Oh, Hughie...!" says Heffernan, pretty stiff; "well, and what do you want here?"

"Och, nothing in life...."

"Take it, then, and let you be off about your business!" says Mickey, as quick as a flash, for once; and he that was proud when he had it said!

Hughie had a most notorious tongue himself, but he knew when to keep it quiet, and he thought it as good to appear very mild and down in himself now, so he said, "My business! sure, what word is that to say to a poor old fellah on chrutches! Not like you, Mr. Heffernan, that'll be off to the fair of Balloch to-morrow morning, bright and early, with them grand fine calves of yours. The price they'll go! There isn't the peel of them in Ardenoo!"

"Do you tell me that?" says Heffernan, that a child could cheat.

"That's what they do be telling me," says Hughie. He could build a nest in your ear, he was that cunning. He thought he saw a chance of getting to the fair himself, and a night's lodging as well, if he managed right.

"I wish to goodness I could get them there, so," says Mickey, "and hasn't one to drive them for me!"

"Would I do?" says Hughie.

Heffernan looked at him up and down.

"Sure you'd not be able!"

"Whoo! me not able? Maybe I'm like the singed cat, better than I look! I'm slow, but fair and easy goes far in a day! Never you fear but I'll get your calves to Balloch the same way the boy ate the cake, very handy...."

The simplest thing would have been for Heffernan to take and drive the calves himself. But he never had the fashion of doing such things. Anyway, it wouldn't answer for the people to see a man with a good means of his own, like Mickey, turning drover that way.

So he thought again, while Hughie watched him, and then says he, "You'll have to be off out of this before the stars have left the sky!"

"And why wouldn't I?" says Hughie; "only give me a bit of supper and a shakedown for the night, the way I'll be fresh for the road to-morrow."

Hughie was looking to be put sitting down in the kitchen alongside Heffernan himself, and to have the settle-bed foreninst the fire to sleep in. But he had to content himself with the straw in the barn and a plateful carried out to him. Queer and slow-going Heffernan might be, but he wasn't thinking of having the likes of Hopping Hughie in his chimney-corner, where he had often thought to see little Rosy Rafferty and she smiling at him.

Hughie took it all very contented. Gay and happy he was after his supper, and soon fell asleep on the straw, with his ragged pockets that empty that the divil could dance a hornpipe in them and not strike a copper there; while Mickey above in bed in his own house, with his fine farm and all his stock about him, calves and cows and pigs, not to speak of the money in the old stocking under the thatch ... Mickey couldn't sleep, only worrying, thinking was he right to go to sell the calves at all; and to be letting Hughie drive them!

"I had little to do," he thought, "to be letting him in about the place at all, and couldn't tell what divilment he might be up to, as soon as he gets me asleep! Hughie's terrible wicked, and as strong as a ditch! I done well to speak him civil, anyway. But I'll not let them calves stir one peg out of this with him! I'd sooner risk keeping them longer...."

There's the way he was going on, tossing and tumbling and tormenting himself, as if bed wasn't a place to rest yourself in and not be raking up annoyances.

So it wasn't till near morning that Mickey dozed off, and never wakened till it was more than time to be off to the fair.

Up he jumped and out to stop Hughie. But the yard was silent and empty. Hughie and the calves were gone.

Mickey was more uneasy than ever.

"A nice bosthoon I must be," he thought, "to go trust my good-looking calves to a k'nat like Hughie! And he to go off without any breakfast, too...!"

Heffernan was a good warrant to feed man or beast. But he mightn't have minded about Hughie, that had plenty of little ways of providing for himself. His pockets would be like sideboards, the way he would have them stuck out with meat and eggs, and so on, that he would be given along the road. Hughie was better fed than plenty that bestowed food upon him.

Balloch, where the fair is held, is the wildest and most lonesome place in Ardenoo, with a steep, rough bit of road leading up to it, very awkward to drive along. Up this comes Heffernan, on his sidecar, driving his best, and in a great hurry to know where he would come on Hughie. He had it laid out in his own mind that sight nor light of his calves he never would get in this world again. So it was a great surprise to him to find them there before him, safe and sound. His heart lightened at that as if a mill-stone was lifted off it.

And the fine appearance there was upon them. Not a better spot in the fair-green than where Hughie had them, opposite a drink-tent where the people would be thronging most! And it was a choice spot for Hughie too. Happy and contented he was, his back against a tree, leaning his weight on one crutch and the other convenient to his hand.

"So there's where you are," says Hughie, a bit scornful. Sure it was a foolish remark to pass and the man there before him, as plain as the nose on your face. But Hughie was puzzled too by the look of relief he saw on Mickey's face. He understood nothing of what Heffernan was passing through. It's an old saying and a true one, "Them that has the world has care!" but them that hasn't it, what do they know about it?

While Hughie was turning this over in his mind, Mickey was throwing an eye upon the calves, and then, seeing they were all right, he was bandying off with himself, when Hughie said, "Terrible dry work it is, driving stock along them dusty roads since the early morning," and he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth with a grin.

At that, Mickey put his hand into his pocket and felt round about, and then pulled it out empty.

"I'll see you later, Hughie," says he, "I'll not forget you, never fear! Just let you wait here till I have the poor mare attended to that drew me here...."

So he went off to do this, and then into the drink-tent with him, the way he could be getting a sup himself. But no sign of he to give anything to Hughie. And there now is where Mickey made a big mistake.

He met up with a couple or three that he was acquainted with in the tent, and they began to talk of this thing and that thing, so that it was a gay little while before Mickey came out again.

When he did: "What sort is the drink in there, Mr. Heffernan?" says Hughie.

Now what Mickey had taken at that time was no more than would warm the cockles of his heart. So he looked quite pleasant and said, "Go in yourself, Hughie, and here's what will enable you to judge it!"

And he held out a shilling to Hughie.

"A bird never yet flew upon the one wing, Mr. Heffernan!" said Hughie, that was looking to get another shilling, and that would be only his due for driving the calves.

Mickey said nothing one way or the other, only went off, and left Hughie standing there, holding out his hand in front of him with the shilling in it, lonesome.

He that was vexed! He got redder in the face than ever, and gave out a few curses, till he remembered there wasn't one to hear him. So he stopped and went into the tent and I needn't say he got the best value he could there.

But all the time he was thinking how badly Heffernan was after treating him, putting him off without enough to see him through the fair even, let alone with a trifle in his pockets to help him on his rounds. He began planning how he could pay out Mickey.

He got himself back to the same spot, near the calves, to see what would happen. After a time, he saw Heffernan coming back, and little Barney Maguire with him. A very decent boy Barney was, quiet and agreeable; never too anxious for work, but very knowledgable about how things should be done, from a wake to a sheep-shearing. Heffernan always liked to have Barney with him at a fair.

The two of them stood near the calves, careless-like, as if they took no interest in them at all.

A dealer came up.

"How much for them calves? Not that I'm in need of the like," says he.

"Nobody wants you to take them, so," says Barney, "but the price is three pounds ... or was it guineas you're after saying, Mr. Heffernan?"

Heffernan said nothing, and the dealer spoke up very fierce; "Three pounds! Put thirty shillings on them, and I'll be talking to ye!"

Mickey again only looked at his adviser, and says Barney, "Thirty shillings! 'Tis you that's bidding wide, this day! May the Lord forgive you! Is it wanting a present you are of the finest calves in Ardenoo?"

Heffernan swelled out with delight at that; as if Barney's word could make his calves either better or worse.

"Wasn't it fifty-seven and sixpence you're after telling me you were offered only yesterday, Mr. Heffernan," says Barney, "just for the small ones of the lot?"

"Och! I dare say! don't you?" says the dealer; "the woman that owns you it was that made you that bid, to save your word!"

Poor Mickey! and he hadn't a woman at all! The dealer of course being strange couldn't know that, nor why Hughie gave a laugh out of him.

But that didn't matter. Mickey took no notice. A man that's a bit "thick" escapes many a prod that another would feel sharp. So in all things you can see how them that are afflicted are looked after in some little way we don't know.

The dealer looked at the calves again.

"Troth, I'm thinking it's the wrong ones yous have here! Yous must have forgotten them fine three-pound calves at home!"

And Mickey began looking very anxiously at them, as he thought maybe he had made some mistake.

"Them calves," says the dealer, slowly, "isn't like a pretty girl, that everyone will be looking to get! And, besides, they're no size! A terrible small calf they are!"

"Small!" said Barney, "It's too big they are! And if they're little itself, what harm! Isn't a mouse the prettiest animal you might ask to see?"

"Ay, it is," says the dealer, "but it'll take a power of mice to stock a farm!" and off with him in a real passion--by the way of.

But Barney knew better than to mind. The dealer came back, and at long last the calves were sold and paid for. Then the lucky-penny had to be given. Hard-set Barney was to get Heffernan to do that. In the end Mickey was so bothered over it that he dropped a shilling just where Hughie was standing leaning his weight on the one crutch as usual.

As quick as a flash, he had the other up, and made a kind of a lurch forward, as if to look for the money. But he managed to get the second crutch down upon the shilling, to hide it; and then he looked round about the ground as innocent as a child, as if he was striving his best to find the money for Mickey.

"Where should it be, at all, at all?" says Mickey; "bewitched it should be, to say it's gone like that!"

And Heffernan, standing there with his mouth open, looked as if he had lost all belonging to him. Then he began searching about a good piece off from where the shilling fell.

"It's not there you'll get it!" said Barney, "sure you ought always look for a thing where you lost it!"

He went over to Hughie.

"None of your tricks, now! It's you has Mr. Heffernan's money, and let you give it up to him!"

"Is it me have it? Sure if I had, what would I do, only hand it over to the man that owns it!" says Hughie.

On the word, he let himself down upon the ground, and slithered over on top of the shilling.

But, quick and all as he was, Barney was quicker.

"Sure, you have it there, you vagabone, you! Give it up, and get off out of this with yourself!"

And he caught Hughie a clip on the side of the head that sent him sprawling on the broad of his back. And there, right enough, under him, was the shilling.

So Barney picked it up, and for fear of any other mistake, he handed it to the dealer.

"It's an ugly turn whatever, to be knocking a poor cripple about that-a-way!" said the dealer, dropping the lucky-penny into his pocket.

"Ach, how poor he is, and let him be crippled, itself!" says Barney; "it's easy seeing you're strange to Ardenoo, or you'd not be compassionating Hughie so tender!"

No more was said then, only in the tent with them again to wet the bargain. Hughie gathered himself up. He was in the divil's own temper. Small blame to him, too! Let alone the disappointment about the shilling, and the knock Barney gave him, the people all had a laugh at him. And he liked that as little as the next one. You'd think he'd curse down the stars out of the skies this time, the way he went on.

And it wasn't Barney's clout he cared about, half as much as Mickey's meanness. It was that had him so mad. He felt he must pay Heffernan out.

He considered a bit; then he gave his leg a slap.

"I have it now!" he said to himself.

He beckoned two young boys up to him, that were striving to sell a load of cabbage plants they had there upon the donkey's back, and getting bad call for them.

"It's a poor trade yous are doing to-day," said Hughie; "and I was thinking in meself yous should be very dry. You wouldn't care to earn the price of a pint?"

"How could we?" says the boys.

"I'll tell you! Do you see that car?" and Hughie pointed to where Heffernan had left his yoke drawn up, and the old mare cropping a bit as well as she could, being tied by the head; "well, anyone that will pull the linch-pin out of the wheel, on the far side of the car, needn't be without tuppence to wet his whistle...." and Hughie gave a rattle to a few coppers he had left in his pocket.

"Yous'll have to be smart about it, too," said he, "or maybe whoever owns that car will have gone off upon it, afore yous have time to do the primest bit of fun that ever was seen upon this fair green!"

"Whose is the car?"

"Och, if I know!" says Hughie; "but what matter for that? One man is as good as another at the bottom of a ditch! ay, and better. It will be the height of divarshin to see the roll-off they'll get below there at the foot of the hill...."

"Maybe they'd get hurted!" said the boys.

"Hurted, how-are-ye!" says Hughie; "how could anyone get hurted so simple as that? I'd be the last in the world to speak of such a thing in that case! But if yous are afraid of doing it...."

"Afraid! that's queer talk to be having!" says one of them, very stiff, for like all boys, he thought nothing so bad as to have "afraid" said to him; "no, but we're ready to do as much as the next one!"

"I wouldn't doubt yiz!" said Hughie; "h-away with the two of you, now! Only mind! don't let on a word of this to any sons of man...."

Off they went, and Hughie turned his back on them and the car, and stared at whatever was going on the other end of the fair. He hadn't long to wait, before Heffernan and Barney and the dealer came out of the drink-tent. Hughie took a look at them out of the corner of his eye.

"Ah!" he said to himself, "all 'purty-well-I-thank-ye!' after what they drank inside! But, wait a bit, Mickey Heffernan...."

The three men went over to where Heffernan's car was waiting. The boys were gone. The other two men helped Mickey to get his yoke ready. Then he got up, and they shook hands a good many times. Heffernan chucked at the reins and started off.

Hughie was watching, and when he saw how steadily the old mare picked her way down the steep boreen, he began to be afraid he hadn't hit on such a very fine plan at all. And if Mickey had only had the wit to leave it all to the poor dumb beast, she might have brought him home safe enough.

But nothing would to him, only give a shout and a flourish of the whip, half-way down the hill. The mare started and gave a jump. She was big and awk'ard, much like Mickey himself. Still it was no fault of her that, when she got to the turn, the wheel came off, and rolled away to one side. Down came the car, Mickey fell off, and there he lay, till some people that saw what was going on ran down the hill after him, and got the mare on to her feet, and not a scratch on her.

But poor Mickey! It was easy to see with half an eye that he was badly hurt.

"Someone will have to drive him home, whatever," said Barney, coming up the hill to look for more help, after doing his best to get Mickey to stand up; and sure, how was he to do that, upon a broken leg? "A poor thing it is, too, to see how a thing of the kind could occur so simple! and a decent man like Heffernan to be nigh hand killed...."

"'Deed, and he is a decent man!" said Hughie; "and why wouldn't he? I'd be a decent man meself if I had the Furry Farm and it stocked...."

"He's in a poor way now, in any case," said Barney. "I doubt will he ever get over this rightly! That's apt to be a leg to him all his life!"

"Well, and so, itself!" said Hughie; "haven't I two of them lame legs? and who thinks to pity Hughie?"

"It's another matter altogether, with a man like Mr. Heffernan," said Barney; "what does the like of you miss, by not being able to get about, compared with a man that might spend his time walking a-through his cattle, and looking at his crops growing, every day in the week?"

"To be sure, he could be doing all that!" said Hughie, "but when a thing of this kind happens out so awkward, it's the will of God, and the will of man can't abate that!"

Trinket's Colt.

_From "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M."_

BY E. OE. SOMERVILLE AND MARTIN ROSS.

It was petty sessions day in Skebawn, a cold, grey day in February. A case of trespass had dragged its burden of cross-summonses and cross-swearing far into the afternoon, and when I left the bench my head was singing from the bellowings of the attorneys, and the smell of their clients was heavy upon my palate.

The streets still testified to the fact that it was market day, and I evaded with difficulty the sinuous course of carts full of soddenly screwed people, and steered an equally devious one for myself among the groups anchored round the doors of the public-houses. Skebawn possesses, among its legion of public-houses, one establishment which timorously, and almost imperceptibly, proffers tea to the thirsty. I turned in there, as was my custom on court days, and found the little dingy den, known as the Ladies' Coffee Room, in the occupancy of my friend Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, who was drinking strong tea and eating buns with serious simplicity. It was a first and quite unexpected glimpse of that domesticity that has now become a marked feature in his character.

"You're the very man I wanted to see," I said, as I sat down beside him at the oilcloth covered table; "a man I know in England who is not much of a judge of character has asked me to buy him a four-year-old down here, and as I should rather be stuck by a friend than a dealer, I wish you'd take over the job."

Flurry poured himself out another cup of tea, and dropped three lumps of sugar into it in silence.

Finally he said, "There isn't a four-year-old in this country that I'd be seen dead with at a pig fair."

This was discouraging, from the premier authority on horseflesh in the district.

"But it isn't six weeks since you told me you had the finest filly in your stables that was ever foaled in the County Cork," I protested; "what's wrong with her?"

"Oh, is it that filly?" said Mr. Knox, with a lenient smile; "she's gone these three weeks from me. I swapped her and L6 for a three-year-old Ironmonger colt, and after that I swapped the colt and L19 for that Bandon horse I rode last week at your place, and after that again I sold the Bandon horse for L75 to old Welply, and I had to give him back a couple of sovereigns luck-money. You see, I did pretty well with the filly after all."

"Yes, yes--oh, rather," I assented, as one dizzily accepts the propositions of a bimetallist; "and you don't know of anything else----?"

The room in which we were seated was closed from the shop by a door with a muslin-curtained window in it; several of the panes were broken, and at this juncture two voices, that had for some time carried on a discussion, forced themselves upon our attention.

"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, ma'am," said the voice of Mrs. McDonald, proprietress of the tea-shop, and a leading light in Skebawn Dissenting circles, shrilly tremulous with indignation, "if the servants I recommend you won't stop with you, it's no fault of mine. If respectable young girls are set picking grass out of your gravel, in place of their proper work, certainly they will give warning!"

The voice that replied struck me as being a notable one, well-bred and imperious.

"When I take a bare-footed slut out of a cabin, I don't expect her to dictate to me what her duties are!"

Flurry jerked up his chin in a noiseless laugh. "It's my grandmother!" he whispered. "I bet you Mrs. McDonald don't get much change out of her!"

"If I set her to clean the pig-sty I expect her to obey me," continued the voice in accents that would have made me clean forty pig-stys had she desired me to do so.

"Very well, ma'am," retorted Mrs. McDonald, "if that's the way you treat your servants, you needn't come here again looking for them. I consider your conduct is neither that of a lady nor a Christian!"

"Don't you, indeed?" replied Flurry's grandmother. "Well, your opinion doesn't greatly distress me, for, to tell you the truth, I don't think you're much of a judge."

"Didn't I tell you she'd score?" murmured Flurry, who was by this time applying his eye to the hole in the muslin curtain. "She's off," he went on, returning to his tea. "She's a great character! She's eighty-three, if she's a day, and she's as sound on her legs as a three-year-old! Did you see that old shandrydan of hers in the street a while ago, and a fellow on the box with a red beard on him like Robinson Crusoe? That old mare that was on the near side, Trinket her name is--is mighty near clean bred. I can tell you her foals are worth a bit of money."

I had heard of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas; indeed, I had seldom dined out in the neighbourhood without hearing some new story of her and her remarkable menage, but it had not yet been my privilege to meet her.

"Well, now," went on Flurry, in his low voice, "I'll tell you a thing that's just come into my head. My grandmother promised me a foal of Trinket's the day I was one-and-twenty, and that's five years ago, and deuce a one I've got from her yet. You never were at Aussolas? No, you were not. Well, I tell you the place there is like a circus with horses. She has a couple of score of them running wild in the woods, like deer."

"Oh, come," I said, "I'm a bit of a liar myself----"

"Well, she has a dozen of them, anyhow, rattling good colts, too, some of them, but they might as well be donkeys for all the good they are to me or any one. It's not once in three years she sells one, and there she has them walking after her for bits of sugar, like a lot of dirty lapdogs," ended Flurry with disgust.

"Well, what's your plan? Do you want me to make her a bid for one of the lapdogs?"

"I was thinking," replied Flurry, with great deliberation, "that my birthday's this week, and maybe I could work a four-year-old colt of Trinket's she has out of her in honour of the occasion."

"And sell your grandmother's birthday present to me?"

"Just that, I suppose," answered Flurry, with a slow wink.